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Updated
3/11/2024

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How does Merge work?

How Merge Works
Merge has two modes: Slides and Presentations.

IMPORTANT: No matter which mode you choose, please do not store your Excel and PowerPoint files, or any files you'll merge INTO your PowerPoint file or any output files on OneDrive, SharePoint or any folder that's synched with them or any other cloud service. It won't work.

Slides mode

Merge starts with a single-slide template presentation and merges your data into it.

Slides mode turns one template slide into a presentation with many slides, one for each record in your data file. One row in your Excel worksheet becomes one slide in the merged presentation.

Slides mode is great for creating certificates, awards slides or similar presentations where you have a list of names, places, pictures, sounds or movies that you want to turn into a lot of identical slides in a hurry.

Each slide can have as many merge fields as you like, but your Slides mode presentation can have only one slide.

Presentations mode

In Presentations mode, Merge starts with a template presentation containing any number of slides. It creates copies of the template presentation. Each copy is customized with the data from one row in your Excel worksheet becomes a complete new customized presentation after the merge.

Here's how you'll use Merge in practice

View a Merge How-To video tutorial created by Webucator's customized instructor-led training services.

In a nutshell: Merge uses "field names" that you define in your data file, searches for them in the PPT template file and replaces them with actual data from your data file.

Your Excel data file

Start with a data file in Excel XLSX format.

Here's a simple example from Excel:

A few important points to remember:

Once you have your data ready, you need to tell PPTMerge what to do with it. Where should it put all the text, pictures and so on? For that, you'll create a "template" PowerPoint file.

Your PowerPoint template file

A template file is an ordinary PowerPoint file that you've added "merge fields" to. Merge fields are just bits of text or shapes with text that tell Merge where to insert merge data, how to format it, and which data to insert.

For text data, the merge field is the name of the field in the Excel file.

For example, if you're creating an awards presentation, you might have fields called :Name: and :Award: in your data file, as in our example above. Wherever you want to insert the name of the award winner in your presentation, simply type :Name: in a text box on one or more of the slides in your template presentation. Type :Award: wherever you want the name of the award to appear, and so on.

As we mentioned, each field must have colons before and after like :This: and the capitalization in both the data file and the PowerPoint file must match.

By now, you may be wondering why the big deal about :colons:. Well, suppose your field name was "name" and you wanted to merge that into:

The name of the next award winner is name

If Merge didn't insist on colons around field names, you'd get:

The Steve Rindsberg of the next Merge Master winner is Steve Rindsberg 

Really, one "Steve Rindsberg" would have been enough, thanks. so instead, use :Name: and :Award: as the field names and in PowerPoint, type:

The name of the next award winner is :Name:

A Slides Mode example

Here's an example template file for just such an awards ceremony:

You've already seen the data we'll use for this project.

Important points to remember:

When you're ready to merge:

Merge creates a new slide for each record in your data file and merges the data for that record into the new slide, so you end up with something like this:

Presentation Mode example

Instead of starting with a single slide and creating additional slides, Presentation mode starts with a single presentation that contains one or more slides, and creates additional presentations, each identical to the template presentation, but with your data merged into it.

In this section, we'll show you how to set up your data and template file for Presentation mode merges and also introduce some of Merge's advanced features.

Here's the data file we'll be using for this example (split into two screens to make it easier for you to read):

Note that there are a few new tricks that you haven't seen yet:

Note: By default, Merge looks for PIC:, SND:, etc. files in the same folder as the merge template PPT file. If your files are stored there, you don't need to specify a full path to the file, just the filename itself in the data file. You can merge images, sounds and videos from files on a network or even on the internet by supplying the full path to the file: c:\My Documents\My Pictures\Picture.jpg or http://www.someplace.com/images/picture.jpg. Merge doesn't allow merging text files using URLs, however.

Here are the slides in our sample Presentations Mode template, which might eventually become a series of presentations, one about each PowerPoint MVP on the MS PowerPoint newsgroup.

The first slide uses three text placeholders, :name:, :specialty: and :startdate:
This time, we've used special characters at the beginning and end of each placeholder (and each matching field name in the data file) to avoid confusing placeholders with literal text.

There's also a rectangle with the text PIC:Portrait in it. This is the placeholder for the picture whose filename is supplied in the data file, in the PIC:Portrait field. When it merges the data, Merge will add the specified picture, fit it into the placeholder rectangle, making it as large as possible without distorting it, then make the placeholder disappear.

Hint: Always use a shape like this to hold pictures or other similar merged content, NOT a text box. You can type the merge field name directly into the shape if you start typing while it's selected.

If no picture file name is supplied or the file isn't available, Merge simply makes the placeholder invisible.

To create a picture placeholder, simply draw a rectangle, then while it's still selected, type PIC:name where "name" is the name you want to identify the picture with. In this case, it's Portrait.

On these two slides, we've used the :name: text placeholder again and also added new movie and sound placeholders. These work exactly the same as PIC placeholders, but you use VID: and SND: for Video/Movies and Sounds respectively.

As you can see from the data file and from this slide, you can use multiple pictures, so long as each has a unique name. You can have more than one picture on a slide and you can use the same picture multiple times on one slide or on different slides.

After you've created and saved your template file, all you need to do is click the Merge button on the ribbon to start the merge. Merge asks you to choose the data file and a folder to save the newly created merged presentations to. Then it merges and saves your new presentations while you take it easy. Here's what one of the merged example presentations looks like:

Obviously, you'll want to make your sound placeholders a wee bit smaller.
And probably drag them off the slide.

Since these are just screen captures of a presentation, the sounds and movies aren't live links here on the web, but they work just as you'd expect them to in the actual merged presentations you create with Merge.

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