PowerPoint Automation: The Ultimate Guide to Building Better Presentations

Spending too much time aligning slide elements and applying corporate branding to shapes and text in PowerPoint?

Discover how PowerPoint automation – from external automation software to writing commands in Microsoft VBA – can help you save time and build better documents faster.

The Basics of PowerPoint Automation

Let’s start with the basics – what is PowerPoint automation, how can you use it, and what benefits could it bring to your business?

Already know this? Skip to: How to Automate Tasks in PowerPoint

What is PowerPoint Automation?

PowerPoint automation refers to the use of software or rule-based commands to streamline the creation, formatting, and updating of presentations.

By automating repetitive tasks – such as data imports, slide generation, and brand-compliant formatting – businesses can save time, reduce errors, and ensure consistency across decks.

Automation is especially valuable for finance and consulting professionals who frequently produce complex reports and client presentations.

Different Use Cases for PowerPoint Automation

Automation empowers professionals to work on more value-driven work by streamlining document creation across three key areas:

Basic Presentation Formatting

Manually adjusting fonts, layouts, and spacing across multiple slides can be tedious and often error-prone. Automation tools can apply predefined templates and formatting rules to ensure presentations remain polished and professional, without repetitive work. 

Custom Company Branding

Maintaining brand consistency across all presentations is crucial for maintaining client trust and optimizing cross-selling across a business. Some automation tools will help you enforce brand guidelines by standardizing colors, fonts, logos, and layouts, ensuring every slide aligns with your firm’s graphic charter.

Data Exports and Updates

Keeping presentations up to date with the latest figures can be time-consuming, especially when a financial model or piece of market analysis is constantly changing. Some automation tools enable seamless data imports and real-time updates, ensuring accuracy without manual copy-pasting and proofing. 

The best PowerPoint automation software will integrate with common data platforms such as Excel, Power BI, and Bloomberg to make workflows even more efficient.

Excel

Some solutions offer data linking between Excel and PowerPoint. These can pull charts, tables, and key figures into PowerPoint slides without constant cross-platform switching. This ensures that presentations always reflect the latest data, eliminating the risk of outdated or inconsistent information – a core benefit for finance teams.

Power BI

Integrating Power BI with PowerPoint allows users to embed interactive, high-quality data visualization into slides. This automation ensures that reports remain dynamic, significantly reducing the time spent on updating real-time data within the deck. 

Bloomberg

Via Bloomberg API and Excel add-ins, finance professionals can fully integrate their tech stack across all stages of document creation in PowerPoint, from the original data source to the final branding and formatting checks.

The Benefits of PowerPoint Automation

Leveraging automation, teams can work faster, maintain brand integrity, and deliver error-free reports with minimal effort. 

Here are a few benefits that your business could experience by integrating automation technology into PowerPoint:

Efficient Document Creation

90% of finance professionals spend up to 2 hours a day in PowerPoint. Automation eliminates the bulk of manual tasks involved, allowing them to focus on higher-value work like analysis and storytelling.

Effortless Brand Compliance

Over a third (38%) of finance professionals admit their reports aren’t compliant with their graphic charter. This can harm client trust and firms risk losing a competitive edge to those with a tighter, more uniform brand identity. Automation mitigates this risk by applying pre-approved templates, fonts, colors, and logos, helping teams create polished, on-brand slides every time. 

Guaranteed Data Accuracy

Manual data entry increases the risk of errors and inconsistencies in reports. PowerPoint automation integrates with data sources like Excel and Power BI, ensuring that figures, charts, and tables are always up to date, improving reliability and minimizing risk.

How to Automate Tasks in PowerPoint

Let’s look at two ways to automate tasks in PowerPoint, from third-party tech to coding solutions that streamline repetitive workflows.

Invest in External Software

There is a range of external presentation automation software available within the Microsoft App Store, so it’s important to find the best fit for your business to deliver value-add and ROI.

The Benefits of Investing in External Software

User-Friendly Interface

Unlike PowerPoint macros or internally-build solutions, PowerPoint automation software offers intuitive, no-code solutions, making them accessible to all users, regardless of technical expertise. When more people are benefiting from the automations, this also ensures an overall increase in quality and quantity of deliverables across your business.

Long-Term Maintenance

Nearly a third (32%) of investment banking tech leaders cite long-term maintenance as their main reason for investing in external software. This saves internal IT teams countless hours on upkeep and guarantees the software will be scalable with Microsoft 365 updates in line with their product roadmap.

Seamless Integrations

Some tools offer seamless integrations with platforms like Bloomberg and Getty Images, enabling users to pull in real-time financial data or high-quality visuals directly into their presentations. By connecting with these external tools, teams can create dynamic, data-driven slides while maintaining brand consistency and saving valuable time.

Different Automation Software for PowerPoint

Let’s take a look at three different PowerPoint automation tools to help you build presentations more efficiently:

Recommended: UpSlide

✅ Best for: End-to-end presentation automation for enterprise teams.

UpSlide is the best document automation software for Microsoft 365. Built specifically around financial and professional services workflows, the tool helps industry leaders automate brand compliance, content distribution, and data exports across PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Power BI, and Outlook.

Here are few common use-cases for UpSlide in PowerPoint:

• Automates all slide, text, and shape formatting within your company’s graphic charter
• Integrates a versatile range of content libraries to access brand-compliant slide elements, pre-formatted tombstone data, and company logos.
• Links data from Excel and Power BI directly to PowerPoint and flexibly updates for guaranteed data accuracy

Tools like UpSlide cover the full range of document automation use-cases across Microsoft 365, but if you’re looking for a software to automate just one task in PowerPoint, here are a few other options:

ToolsToo

✅ Suitable for: Automating repetitive slide adjustments.

ToolsToo is an automation tool designed to streamline repetitive tasks by allowing users to format slide elements in PowerPoint.

Here are few common use-cases for ToolsToo:

• Aligns, resizes, and distributes elements with one click
• Quickly standardizes text boxes and shapes

LogoIntern

✅ Suitable for: Looking up corporate logos to add to slides.

LogoIntern is a PowerPoint automation tool that simplifies the process of inserting and formatting corporate logos directly onto slides.

Here are few common use-cases for LogoIntern in PowerPoint:

• Inserts logos directly onto PowerPoint slides
• Automates logo formatting after inserting

While these tools are suitable for solving specific problems in PowerPoint, many businesses find themselves taking on multiple software solutions to fix individual problems from team to team, without addressing any overlapping inefficiencies in PowerPoint. For a tool that combines the functionality of both LogoIntern and ToolsToo, alongside a range of financial-services-specific automation, discover UpSlide.

Bonus: Write Rule-Based Automations Yourself in PowerPoint with Microsoft VBA

Macros work across the Microsoft 365 suite, enabling users to automate specific tasks in PowerPoint bespoke to their own workflows.

Don’t want to build automations yourself? Skip to the conclusion.

What is a Macro in PowerPoint?

A macro in PowerPoint is a sequence of commands and actions that can be recorded, stored, and executed to automate repetitive tasks. Macros are written in Microsoft VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), allowing users to streamline workflows, enhance productivity, and reduce manual effort when working with presentations.

Macros have a range of applications in PowerPoint, such as:

• Automating repetitive actions (e.g., formatting slides, applying animations, inserting common elements).
• Creating custom buttons or menus for faster navigation.
• Enhancing interactivity by triggering actions like opening files, jumping between slides, or playing media.

How to Build a Macro in Three Steps

• Enable the Developer Tab – Go to File > Options > Customize Ribbon, then check Developer to display the tab in PowerPoint.
• Record or Write a Macro – Click Developer > Macros > Create, then write VBA code in the Visual Basic Editor (VBE) or use the Record Macro function for simple tasks.
• Save and Run the Macro – Save the presentation as a Macro-Enabled Presentation (.pptm)*, then run the macro via Developer > Macros or assign it to a button for easy access.

Watch this quick tutorial to find out more about PowerPoint macros

Macros are a good option if you want to automate individual, unique elements of your workflows in PowerPoint. However, as a code-based solution, it can be time-consuming if you’re not a VBA expert. We recommend considering an external software provider to save you from spending too much time in PowerPoint’s Visual Basic Editor!

Conclusion: The Best PowerPoint Automation Solution

Personal users of PowerPoint can choose from a range of solutions and quick add-ins from the Microsoft store. However, enterprise teams require a greater need for precision, brand compliance, and security. In these cases, they should always opt for an all-in-one solution that’s scalable to the needs of their whole business.

Any business that hasn’t explored PowerPoint automation – whether for internal reporting or for client-facing teams – is missing out on hours of time savings. Plus, it’s a risk that your competitors aren’t willing to take.

To cut PowerPoint creation time by up to 75% within your team, discover UpSlide’s PowerPoint Automation Solution.