Alphabet Publishing

Looking for an easy way to create a PowerPoint presentation from Excel? This method works great to merge data from Excel to PowerPoint. It’s a simple way to create flashcards, award certificates, project reports, any kind of presentation where you want to create multiple slides with the same kind of information on each.

I also talk about using the Master Slide View to create your own PPT themes and formatting.

Watch the video to learn how to Merge Data from Excel to PowerPoint

Step by Step: Merge Data from Excel to PowerPoint

1. Create an Excel document and create your headings. Then add data in each category. For example:

2. Save and close your Excel file. Put MERGE in the file name so you don’t get confused about that file’s function.

Mail Merge to Word

3. Open a Word Doc. Go to Mailings->Select recipients->Use existing list and browse till you find your MERGE Excel file.

4. Now click on Insert Mailing Fields and place your category names in the order you want them to appear.

5. You need to give each data category a Heading Style by going to Home->Styles. If you give a data category the status of H1, it will become the title of a new slide. Use the same Heading style for text you want to format the same way in PowerPoint.

6. You can also add static text that will appear on every slide. If you want each slide to have the title Flash Cards, type it above your data categories and style it H1.

6. For now, the format of the text (font, color, size) does NOT matter. All that matters is each text is in order and is H1, H2, H3, H4 or H5. And that if you want a new slide, you give that category H1 status. So if you want a question on one slide and then an answer on a new slide, your doc might look something like this:

7. Now click Mailings->Check for Errors and choose “Complete the merge without pausing. Report errors in a new document” -> OK

There shouldn’t be any errors. The new doc will have a preview of your slides with each page being a slide. If it looks good, save that document and include MERGE in the name. I advise saving it in the same folder as your Excel file so you can find them and edit them as needed.

8. You’re almost there! Now close the Word Doc (you can’t merge with Office with open documents) and open a blank presentation in PowerPoint. Go to New Slide->Slides from Outline. Open your Word Merge Document and you should have your slides!

Formatting in PowerPoint

9. The formatting will look terrible, so go to View->Slide Master. From there you’ll see something like

“Master Title Style” is the slide title, anything you put in H1. “Master text Style” is H2. Second level is H3. Third level is H4 and so on.

Select the text you want to reformat and use the formatting tools to change the font, color, size, alignment, or spacing. You can even move the text around, change the color of the text box, add images, and format the background of the slides. Anything you do here will apply to ALL your slides.

When done, go to Master Slides->Close Master Slide and you’ll see that all your slides have changed!

That’s it! That’s how you merge data from Excel to PowerPoint. Hope this helps and feel free to leave questions or comments below!