slideRush items

Texts, ranges and charts can be linked from Excel® to PowerPoint® by either using the Live Insert feature in PowerPoint® or by defining the items upfront in Excel®.

Best practice

If working on larger projects with several team members it is recommended to define slideRush items upfront in Excel®. In order to keep things organized it is recommended to define a naming convention for the items.

slideRush items

slideRush items can be organized by using the corresponding view of the task pane in Excel®

slideRush items in Taskpane

The items shown in this list have previously been defined as slideRush items and are ready to be inserted in PowerPoint®. This list shows all previously defined slideRush items, including all items that may have been defined using the live insert feature in PowerPoint®. The icon of each row shows what kind of slideRush item it is, distincting between single cells, ranges and charts. The first column shows the titel as it will also be shown in all relevant dialogs in PowerPoint®. The third column shows the target of the item for single cells and ranges. Charts do not have cell ranges, therefore this column stays empty. The third column shows the worksheet the item is placed on.

If the Auto toggle on the top right is enabled items will refresh automatically if the active worksheet is changed. If the toggle is disabled the list has to be reloaded manually by pressing the Refresh button. It is more comfortable to enable auto refreshing, however in large workbooks this may cause some delays when navigating through worksheets.

Managing items

If you want to add a new slideRush item select a single cell, a range or a chart and press the Add button. Alternatively you can also use the Add button in the ribbon or the shortcut key (by default RAlt + b). Depending on the selection a dialog pops up where you need to enter a title for the new item. This title will be used to identify the item later. By hitting the Range selection button next to the Range text box the tool for choosing a selection in Excel® pops up.

Dialog to add new slideRush items

If you want to edit an existing item simply select the item from the list and click the Edit item button in the context menu. The same dialog as when adding new items will appear and you can change the item’s preferences.

Edit slideRush item

The same context menu can be used to delete items or to jump to the source of the item. By default jumping to the source automatically when selecting any item is enabled. However this behaviour can be turned off in the options. Multiple items at once an be deleted by using the drop down menu of the Add button like shown below:

Delete multiple slideRush items at once

Options

The options can be found in the dropdown button of the Refresh button:

slideRush options
The following settings are available
  • Jump on selection: If this option is enabled when selecting any item in the list Excel® will automatically jump to the correspdonding cell, range or chart
  • Scope: This option determines if all items within the workbook are shown in the list or only the items on the active worksheet are shown. Please note, if this option is set to Worksheet either the Auto refresh toggle as to be enabled or a manual refresh has to be performed when the active worksheet changes. Setting this option to Worksheet may increase speed when navigating through worksheets
  • Items: This option determines how many items are shown in the list at once. The lower the number the faster the list will load.
  • Refresh: This item is equivalent to pressing the Refresh button and will reload the item list
  • Clear: This button removes all items from the list, however the items will not be deleted from the Excel® file
  • PowerPoint® settings: This item opens a dialog to manage central settings for the PowerPoint® links

PowerPoint settings

This dialog can be accessed via the dropdown menu of the Refresh button on the slideRush items pane

slideRush settings
The following settings are available
  • Title: This determines the title of the Excel® file as it will be shown in the lists in PowerPoint®. By default the file name is used as the title, however when selecting Custom title any title may be entered.
  • Permissions: These toggles determine if the file may be added to new PowerPoint® files, if new items may be inserted into PowerPoint® from the file or if updates in PowerPoint® can be performed based on this file. If any of the toggles are disabled PowerPoint® will show a corresponding message if the operation is initiated and will block the operation. Disabling updates for example may be a good choice if someone is performing large changes on an Excel® file and does not want someone else to perform inconsistent updates in Excel®.
  • Workbook settings: These settings are very technical and should only be changed if necessary
    • Version: This setting shows the version of the slideRush items. The version is an integer and increased every time the workbook is saved. The version is necessery to determine if the newest version of the file is used in PowerPoint. By clicking the button next to the text edit the version may be changed manually. However, it is highly recommended to only perfom this operation if necessary.
    • Workbook ID: The workbook ID is an automatically generated GUID (global unique identifier) and uniquely identifies the workbook. The GUID is used to find out if an Excel® file linked to PowerPoint is new or does already exist in the file list. If a workbook is copied the new workbook will have the same GUID as the old workbook. If the new workbook is just a newer version of the workbook the two GUIDs should stay the same and not being changed. The Change file feater in PowerPoint® will check if the GUIDs of two files are the same and display a warning if this is not the case. If the new file is a different file the GUID should be changed. This may be the case if eg. the reporting file from January is copied to build the reporting for February. In this case the two files are not related to each other and the GUID should be changed. A GUID can be newly generated by hitting the Refresh button. The edit button provides the ability to manually edit any GUID. However this is only recommended if an existing GUID needs to be copied to the file.

Filtering items

The dropdown box on the top left provides the ability to filter the list for Single cells, Linked ranges or Linked charts. Selecting All items will disable the filter. Items can further be filtered by using the search bar above the list. Simply enter the term you want to filter for and press Enter:

Filter for slideRush items

A more specific way to filter lists is provided through the context menu. Right click the header of the list and select Show Auto Filter Row. A new row will popup before the first item where you can add your filter criteria. All filter criterias are displayed on the bottom of the list.

Auto filter row for slideRush items