PowerPoint Report Export > How to adjust it to your needs

Feature available to accounts with Corporate Extension add-on or Expert license.

This article presents a step-by-step guide how to create a custom branded PowerPoint Report Template in 10 minutes.

Step by step guide to create your custom PowerPoint Report Template

These steps describe how to create a universal template file version working well with both Basic and Dashboard Reports.

Complete video tutorial

Step 1: Download Survalyzer’s template file for reference

Step 2: Start with your company official PowerPoint template file

We strongly recommend to start with the PowerPoint template file that is already custom branded and used at your company. Just copy it and use as a base for further work. It is much easier to add necessary placeholders in that file than to recreate your branding in a new file.

Step 3: Remove all content slides.

The rule is: any content slides present in the ppt template file will be automatically added at the end of each report export. So unless you want to keep a fixed ending page for each report, we recommend to delete all content slides from your target template file.

Step 4: Open Slide Master View

Open your corporate themed PowerPoint Template and open the Slide Master View.

Step 5: Adjust theme colors and fonts (if needed)

It is recommended to set the same six PowerPoint theme accent colors as the ones set in your Survalyzer color scheme (admin account settings). This will ensure the same chart colors in both online and PowerPoint reports.

In order to edit the ppt theme colors, navigate to Slide Master > Colors > Customize Colors:

Step 6: Find and duplicate title and content Slide Layouts

You will notice that your Slide Master View contains several slide layouts with different names.

Survalyzer export will require 2 special slide layouts: one title layout and one content layout.

We recommend to duplicate your existing title and content slide layouts as a base. You don’t have to delete all other existing slide layouts, but it is good to drag and drop your new Survalyzer related layouts to the top for easier future navigation.

Step 7: Rename your new slide layouts

Rename the title slide layout to ng-title

Rename the content slide layout to ng-designMaster

Step 8: Put Survalyzer-related content placeholders in desired positions of your new slide layouts.

It is helpful here to reference our PowerPointReportTemplate file from the beginning of the article.

To save time on the text fields formatting, it is always recommended to work with already existing placeholders boxes in your existing template file. Just copy placeholder text from our template and paste them as text to your template. If you need more fields, copy already existing fields in your template.

Title page should have the following placeholders:

1. {SurveyName}
2. {ReportName}

Content page should have the following placeholders:

1. {PageGroupTitle}
2. {ReportPageTitle}
3. {ReportPageSubTitle}
4. {SlotTitle1}
5. {SlotSubTitle1}
6. {SlotContent1}
7. {SlotFooter1}

Note: All slot-related placeholders must be present in the PowerPoint template. If any of the slot-related placeholders is missing, you will receive an error message when trying to export the report.

Based on the main content slide layout, other default types of slides will be automatically generated by the system during the export (see slide master view of the PowerPoint downloaded report with the new template). You can further control the PowerPoint design by manually correcting automatically generated layouts and uploading the template containing all variations.

Step 9: Set new ppt template file as a new default for report exports

Option A: For entire account (all workspaces)

Upload the template file in the Files & Media Library > Shared > Documents folder, according to the naming logic below. Templates uploaded this way will be automatically used across entire account (unless there are other ones configured on workspace or report level).

Naming & logic of template files present in Files & Media Library > Shared > Documents folder:

Option B: For selected workspaces

You can also specify custom template files per each workspace. Upload you template file either to Shared or Workspace > Documents folder and select it in Workspace settings > Layout Tab.

Option C: For selected Dashboard Reports

You can also specify custom template file per each Dashboard Report. You will find this setting Dashboard Report Builder > Share tab sidebar settings.

(Optional) How to further customize PPT Template for Dashboard Reports

Depending on your corporate PPT Template, you may find it difficult to create universally good PowerPoint Template that works well with both Basic and Dashboard Reports. In that case, you can create one for Basic Report, and one for Dashboard Reports in your account.

Video Tutorial: Create alternative PowerPoint Template file for Dashboard Reports

Create and set different default PowerPoint Template File for Basic Reports and Dashboard Reports

Copy your current template file and follow steps described in Step 8 above to configure different template file for Basic and Dashboard Reports.

Add “section” slides with page titles so that page title is not repeated on each slide

Many online Dashboard Reports contain a lot of content on one report page. In that case, using universal PowerPoint template file will result in page title (and page group title) repeated on every single slide.

To avoid that, you have an option to create 3rd, additional “section” layout in template slide master view, based on the logic presented in below. Then you can delete page-related placeholders in the content slide layout. View tutorial video above to see how to use it.

Example “ng-page-title” slide layout:

Control the export layout of each Layout Row

Video tutorial

If automatic creation and selection of layouts doesn’t work well for all content in your report, you can also manually select which PowerPoint template should be used per each Pro-Report layout row. You will find this feature in Dashboard Report Builder > Report Pages > Layout Row settings > Select custom PowerPoint master layout

You can also add “custom” layouts, if none of the automatically generated ones satisfy your needs. Then you can reference this template by using the “custom” option in the feature mentioned above.

Other Tips & Tricks

How to change default table style in ppt template

1. In your powerpoint template file, create a temporary table in any place
2. Click on this table.
3. Go to “Table Design”, select table design template you want, right-click and “Set as Default”.
4. Remove temporarily created table

Unfortunately there is no possibility to create fully custom default table style in powerpoint, you can only select one of the provided ones. Fully custom default table style is available only in Word / PDF export.

Troubleshooting

I receive an error message while trying to download the ppt report export

1. Make sure you have all Slot-related placeholders in your master content slide layout, they are obligatory. Page-related placeholders are optional.
2. Make sure the names of the two Master slide layouts are updated and spelled correctly (see step 6 above)
3. Make sure that the placeholder {SlotContent1} is inside the placeholder box type “Content”( see screenshot below). If it is of type “Text” you will receive an error message when downloading the Report, because charts cannot be exported into placeholder of type “Text”.

I can’t change the name of my master slide layout

If your corporate PowerPoint Template does not allow Master layout name changes, you need to create new slide layouts (instead of copying current ones) and copy-paste desired content and placeholders to this new layouts.

What if I don’t use slot subtitles or footers in my online reports? I don’t want to loose precious slide space for slot content.

The slot content field (e.g. with chart) in PowerPoint export will automatically adjust size if one of the other slot-related fields (e.g. Slot title, subtitle or footer) is empty, so that there are not too big whitespaces around slot content (e.g. chart)

This mechanism doesn’t work for page related placeholders → if one of those are empty in online report (page group / title / subtitle), then the space will be left empty in ppt export.

I already have a PowerPointTemplate file in my Files & Media Library, but layout and placeholder names are different than in this article

In the past we used legacy version that still works correctly with Basic Reports. You may continue to use it, however it will not work correctly with Dashboard Reports.