‘Mail merge’ in Powerpoint (2003)

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Hi.

I run a Beaver Scout Colony in the UK, and when I invest my Beavers I present them with a certificate that I have made in Powerpoint (attached). I have a similar one for when they leave and I send them up to Cubs. Usually, I have to do these in batches, which means changing dates and names (which is reasonably straightforward, I grant you) but also remembering to change “his” to “her” as appropriate. I’ve just been through a run of these where I’ve managed to get loads of them wrong, so I thought that it would be much easier to link these to my membership spreadsheet which has all this information on it.

Trouble is, Powerpoint doesn’t seem to want to link to external things – or if it does, I haven’t found it. What I want is something like Mail Merge. I did try copying the objects from Powerpoint into Word, but I got a drawing canvas I didn’t want, and also the promise (which in PP is written at an angle so that it goes on the board that the Beaver is holding) comes out horizontal, looks wrong, and can’t be altered as far as I can see.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Stuart

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PowerPoint does not have anything resembling mail merge. It might be possible to imitate it using Automation, but PowerPoint VBA is limited and weird.
Do you have Microsoft Publisher? It has better graphic capabilities than Word, and it has a Word-like mail merge feature.

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Hans,

I do have Publisher, yes – although I tend to forget it’s there. I’ll try it and see what happens.

Thanks

Stuart

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(Edited by HansV to make URL clickable – see Help 19)

Steve Rindsberg has a merge add in.
http://www.pptools.com/merge/index.html%5B/url%5D

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