Excel – Linked images in PowerPoint not updating

chartsmicrosoft excelmicrosoft-powerpoint

I have a PowerPoint (2010) presentation with two slides. Both slides contain an image (two different images), and the presentation is set to loop infinitely until ESC is pressed.

An Excel file exports the two images used in the PowerPoint presentation every 5 minutes (they are charts, but I can't use a linked chart to the Excel file in PowerPoint, because PowerPoint ruins the chart somehow). The images are different from the original ones and Excel is set to overwrite the existing images.
What I presume, is that PowerPoint loses the link to the file, since the 'new' image is different from the 'original' image.

Does anyone know a solution or an alternative method to do this?

Best Answer

I've run into this myself for updating weather images from the Internet during a slideshow.

Since Powerpoint stores the image files within itself while the slideshow is running, it does not update the images.

This means you have to trigger it to update the links by using VBA code or use an add in like; Update links during slide show Add-in for PowerPoint 97 or later or LiveImage - update inserted linked image real-time in PowerPoint.

I don't use that program any more and can not find the code I once used. The above information should help you get where you want to be.

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Create PowerPoint Presentations based on csv/xml file

You have a few choices for automating the creation of powerpoint presentations.

In older versions of powerpoint there's a built in macro recording tool to create visual basic scripts. You can still manually create these scripts to automate viewgraph generation
In more recent version of MS Office there are much better plugins for c# to create presentations (and other office files) directly from data. Here's an older link to microsoft documentation (2002) but it should give you a good idea of how it's done.

Mac – Can you change linked charts to embedded charts in PowerPoint 2010? Or use relative links to Excel files

This code may help. But you need to have the chart pasted in PowerPoint as a Linked OLE Object.

Option Explicit

Sub HyperLinkSearchReplace()

    Dim oSl As Slide
    Dim oSh As Shape
    Dim sSearchFor As String
    Dim sReplaceWith As String

    sSearchFor = InputBox("What text should I search for?", "Search for ...")
    If sSearchFor = "" Then
        Exit Sub
    End If

    sReplaceWith = InputBox("What text should I replace it with" & vbCrLf _
        & sSearchFor & vbCrLf _
        & "with?", "Replace with ...")
    If sReplaceWith = "" Then
        Exit Sub
    End If

    On Error Resume Next

    For Each oSl In ActivePresentation.Slides

        For Each oSh In oSl.Shapes
            If oSh.Type = msoLinkedOLEObject _
            Or oSh.Type = msoMedia Then
               oSh.LinkFormat.SourceFullName = _
               Replace(oSh.LinkFormat.SourceFullName, _
               sSearchFor, sReplaceWith)
            End If
        Next

    Next    ' slide

End Sub

Best Answer

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Create PowerPoint Presentations based on csv/xml file

Mac – Can you change linked charts to embedded charts in PowerPoint 2010? Or use relative links to Excel files

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