Slideform Bulk Mode

Quickly generate multiple copies of a slide template

Slideform Bulk Mode

Slideform Bulk Mode is used to generate slides, or full presentations, in batches. This is especially useful for presentations that have repeated slides such as inventory lists, client or personnel lists, certificates, and labels. The example below shows how to duplicate a single slide multiple times in a single slide deck. The other primary use case is for duplicated full presentations such as sales decks and client reports. 

When you generate in Bulk Mode, you can choose whether to group all the output into a single slide deck or to create a separate presentation file for each row. If you group them into a single presentation, you can select which slides will be replicated.

The data source should be a spreadsheet with one row of data for each copy of the template. You can use either Google Sheets or Excel as the data source.

Setting up a Slide Template for Bulk Mode

You can use a standard Slideform slide template in Bulk Mode. Just keep in mind which slides will be copied for each version. See How to create a slide template for more details.

Here is a simple example of a four-slide property management report. Slide 3 will be replicated for each property in my portfolio. Slides 1, 2, and 4 will appear only once.

⇒ To get started: create a New Project in Slideform and upload your template. If you are using Google Slides, make sure to share the template with share@slideform.co.

Data Formatting: You may use the Configure Data page to set formatting options for each pragma. This is useful if you want to ensure consistent formatting of numeric, currency, or percent values in your data.

Formulas: In Configure Data, you may also include pragmas that are calculated from the data in the spreadsheet. Just enter the formula for the relevant pragma.

Preset values for pragmas: In Configure Data, you may click Preset a Value for pragmas that are not filled in from your sheet. In the example above, these include the logo image, the local manager name and phone. See How to Configure the Data Mapping for help.

Setting up a Data Source for Bulk Mode

In Bulk Mode, the data source must be either a Google Sheet or an Excel file. 

⇒ To get started: create a spreadsheet with a column for each data field in your slide template and one row for each copy of the template. The data sheet can contain additional columns that are not used in the slides. If using Google Sheets, share the sheet with share@slideform.co.

Optional: Save your sheet as a data source for future use. See How to Connect a Data Source for information.

Here is sample data for the template shown above. This data sheet includes a header row and rows of data each corresponding to a different property.

Images: You can pull in images from the spreadsheet to your slides. There are several ways to do this.

• Insert images in the sheet: Click on the cell in the spreadsheet and go to the Google Sheets menu. Choose Insert > Image > Insert image in cell, then select your image. 
• Enter the URL to an image in Google Drive. Note, images must be shared with share@slideform.co.
• Enter a public URL to an image (such as on a shopping site) in the cell. Slideform will fetch the image as long as it is publicly accessible.

Generating Slides in Bulk Mode

Once you have prepared a slide template and corresponding data sheet, go to the project and click the Bulk Mode button.

 

The Bulk Mode page walks you through several steps.

1. Do you want the generated slides to be grouped into a single presentation? If so, click the "single presentation" toggle to ON. If you would like to generate separate presentation files for each copy of the template, keep the toggle set to OFF.

2. Select or enter the data file. Choose the data file from your list of saved data sources.

Or, if you have not saved the data source, enter the URL of the Google Sheet (be sure to share the sheet with share@slideform.co first) and click Submit. Or upload an Excel file.

The data will be read into Slideform and then additional configuration options will be shown as below.

3. Select the sheet that contains the bulk data: If your spreadsheet has only one sheet, it will be auto-populated, otherwise, select the appropriate sheet.

⇒ Data Filtering: You may want to create slides for only some of the rows in your data sheet. You can include or exclude rows based on a field in your data sheet using the filter option. For example, I chose to create slides for the 2023 data by filtering by the year column in my sheet and selecting those where year equals 2023.

4. Data mapping: Next, match each column in the data sheet to the appropriate  placeholder (pragma) in the slide template.

In the mapping section, pictured above, the first column shows each column in the data sheet. For each column, select the pragma from the dropdown in the second column.  You may also set the data format in the third column. If a data column is not used in the slide deck, just leave the pragma section blank.

 

5. (Optional) Specify which slides will repeat. If you have a title slide or other slides int he template that should not repeat, set beginning and ending of the repeating section here.

 

6. (Optional) Specify a header row, start, and end rows. In addition to filtering the data, you can also create presentations for a subset of the data sheet by setting a starting and ending row. 

If your header row is not row 1, enter the row number corresponding to the header row. All rows above this number will be ignored.

 

7. Create Presentations. If the detected pragmas look correct, click Create Presentations to generate your output. The results will be shown on the project page under All Downloads.

For more, check out the video walkthrough