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PowerPoint Slides from Excel List

Reuse a list in Excel to quickly create a PowerPoint presentation

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003
OS: Microsoft Windows XP / Vista

Date Created: August 2nd 2006
Last Updated: February 27th 2009

PowerPoint makes great presentations, and the best part is that it allows you to reuse all the text content that you might have created in another application.

In this tutorial, We will show you can reuse a list in Excel to quickly create a PowerPoint presentation in less than a minute:

1. In Microsoft Excel, save your list to a text file by choosing File | Save As. Choose a location to save the file, and make sure that the file type is Unicode Text (.txt), as you can see in Figure 1. Click Save.
   
   
   Figure 1: Save As Unicode Text
   
   
2. This will bring up a message that you can see in Figure 2. Accept the option to save the active Excel sheet, and click OK.
   
   
   Figure 2:
   
   
3. Open the text file in any text editor such as Notepad, or even Microsoft Word. Make sure each word, phrase, or sentence is on a different line. Edit as required, and save.
   
   
4. In PowerPoint, choose File | Open to summon the dialog box that you can see in Figure 3. In the "Files of type" drop-down list, choose All Outlines, and select the text file you just converted/created, and click Open.
   
   
   Figure 3: Open a text file in PowerPoint
   
   This will create a PowerPoint presentation with each word, phrase, or sentence on individual slides as title placeholders.
   
   
5. This presentation is editable, all slides can be added or removed, content can be added on the slides. You can also convert some titles to bulleted text by using the Outlining toolbar.