FAQ: Merge PowerPoint Presentations Into One Big Presentation

Nov 24, 2018 | DataPoint Automation, FAQ

How to Merge PowerPoint presentations into one big presentation

I have multiple PowerPoint created and they have DataPoint connections. I want to merge them together into one.

How can I merge them together and keep all my DataPoint connections?

I don’t want to re-connect manually. Is there a way?

With static presentations, you can open one presentation and import the slides from the other presentations. But sometimes, you have to merge a large number of presentations, every day, and that is probably a boring job that you would like to automate.

With dynamic presentations created by our DataPoint add-on, there is an extra problem. With DataPoint you can set up connections to data sources and then use those data sources at various shapes of your slides. The information of the data connections, are stored at presentation level, while the linking of shapes to those data connections are written or added to the shapes. So when you simply import or copy over slides from one presentation to the other, you are copying the slides and the shapes, but you are missing the data linking information that way.

For those people, we have a small and free tool to merge multiple presentations into one big presentation, by just running an executable.

Place all presentations that you want to merge into one folder. Copy in our free PPMergePresentations.exe here too.

Now, you can run the PPMergePresentations.exe program by double-clicking the application. This will start the merging process. It will create a new presentation in this same folder here and name it consolidated.pptx.

For DataPoint-enabled presentations, this will copy the connection information as well and take care of the proper shapes linking after the import.

Once that all presentations are processed, a pop up message will be shown.

You will find the newly merged presentation called consolidated.pptx in your folder. If this presentation was existing before, it would have been deleted first.

Sometimes this tool is handy for your company when you have different departments and different people inputting information on their powerpoint. Then, if you want to show all the presentations on a television in your office or factory, then you can get the best results with one and merged presentation. Our iPoint product is great to schedule, distribute and launch the slideshow on remote locations.

22 Comments

sumit kumar on April 19, 2019 at 07:33

wow.. i used it…. really this so excellent software.. too simple to use and way of working is too interesting.
i gave it 5 star/out of 5 star
really thanks to provide this wonderful software.
Admin on April 19, 2019 at 09:52

Thanks for the rating. Appreciated!
Save Might Life on July 16, 2019 at 05:07

what is the order of merging ?
is it alphabetically ?
Admin on July 16, 2019 at 08:15

The order is as files are sorted. So yes, alphabetically on filename. String comparison.
Steinar on August 22, 2019 at 12:20

Can you tick of for some items in the folder and merge these instead of all?
Admin on August 22, 2019 at 17:12

Hi Steinar, currently it takes all PowerPoint presentations of the current folder. Maybe if you want, we could add that functionality for you, in a custom project for you. Is that an option?
Sanjit Keskar on April 10, 2020 at 13:41

I was attempting to join 5 ppts files each having 4 to 6 slides each.

The software gave this error message

Error: Unable to cast COM object of type ‘Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.ApplicationClass’ to interface type ‘Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint._Application’. This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID ‘{91493442-5A91-11CF-8700-00AA0060263B}’ failed due to the following error: Error loading type library/DLL. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80029C4A (TYPE_E_CANTLOADLIBRARY)).

How can this be resolved?
Admin on April 10, 2020 at 13:45

Do you have PowerPoint installed on your computer? If so, try to run a repair on MS Office. I guess that that will help. Otherwise let us know.
Sanjit Keskar on April 19, 2020 at 13:01

Thanks for your effort to help me. Yes I do have Powerpoint installed and did run a repair as advised. On running the exe again to merge presentations this is the error message that results
—————————
PPMergePresentations
—————————
Error: Unable to cast COM object of type ‘Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.ApplicationClass’ to interface type ‘Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint._Application’. This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID ‘{91493442-5A91-11CF-8700-00AA0060263B}’ failed due to the following error: Error loading type library/DLL. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80029C4A (TYPE_E_CANTLOADLIBRARY)).
Admin on April 19, 2020 at 18:13

I have an idea. Can you install this https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48217 and try again. This is the VSTO runtime.
Most likely (and that is normal), this component is installed by our setups, but here for the PPMergePresentations, you did not install it as a setup, but directly as an EXE. So that might explain the error you get.
Let me know.
Sanjit Keskar on April 25, 2020 at 10:55

I installed the VSTO runtime package but on running the merge tool it yet again returns an error
—————————
PPMergePresentations
—————————
Error: Unable to cast COM object of type ‘Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.ApplicationClass’ to interface type ‘Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint._Application’. This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID ‘{91493442-5A91-11CF-8700-00AA0060263B}’ failed due to the following error: Error loading type library/DLL. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80029C4A (TYPE_E_CANTLOADLIBRARY)).
—————————
OK
—————————
Thank you for being on this with me
Admin on April 25, 2020 at 11:35

Ok, then we try something else. Can you check this: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/18919.c-troubleshooting-unable-to-cast-com-object-of-type-microsoft-office-interop-powerpoint-applicationclass.aspx
Sanjit Keskar on April 26, 2020 at 10:24

Yes! Yes! Yes!
THAT solved my problem and the utility does work now sans any error popup

However, only the background formatting of the FIRST file is maintained NOT of subsequent files

example
01 FILE.PPTX
– SLIDE 1 – BLUE BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 2 – YELLOW BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 3 – RED BACKGROUND

02 FILE.PPTX
– SLIDE 1 – GRADIENT BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 2 – TEXTURE BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 3 – PURPLE BACKGROUND

03 FILE.PPTX
– SLIDE 1 – IMAGE BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 2 – ORANGE BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 3 – PATTERN BACKGROUND

ON MERGE

CONSOLIDATED.PPTX
– SLIDE 1 – BLUE BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 2 – YELLOW BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 3 – RED BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 4 – WHITE BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 5 – WHITE BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 6 – WHITE BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 7 – WHITE BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 8 – WHITE BACKGROUND
– SLIDE 9 – WHITE BACKGROUND

Objects, text and formatting retained on all slides

I am using office 365 (64 bit) on windows 10 (64 bit)

Thank you sir
Admin on April 27, 2020 at 07:25

OK great news finally:-). We can fix that formatting while copying by changing some logic.
Could you start a trouble ticket for this at https://presentationpoint.com/support/ to avoid that we are filling this page here with your individual case please?
AMIRSALEH JAFARI on April 28, 2020 at 02:08

hello,
thank you very much for such a helpful tool.

I have problem. For example, when I merge different files in order from number 1 to 10, the final file does not show the files in order, actually they are mixed up. maybe number 3 is shown as the first slide.

Would you please help me solve this problem.

Looking forward to hearing form you
regards
Admin on April 28, 2020 at 06:30

Please create a trouble ticket for this at https://presentationpoint.com/support/ and there we will look into your problem. Normally the presentations are processed alphabetically and new slides are placed after the previous imported slides.
Jerry on April 15, 2021 at 19:14

Great tool! It works wonderfully for me. I have one problem, similar to the previous commentator’s. It would be much easier for us to use if the presentations were merged in the order they appear in the folder rather than alphabetically. As a work-around we rename the files every time we want to change the order, and since some of our users are not very computer literate, this becomes a problem. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks!
Jerry on July 22, 2021 at 17:15

The tool was working beautifully until last week when IT installed OneDrive for back-up purposes. Now the tool fails most of the time. Generally it provides error messages, and sometimes there are system error messages. Sometimes it works. HELP! It’s driving me crazy and we hope soon to turn it over to our sales force to use.
Hendrik Dijkstra on September 14, 2021 at 10:32

Great tool. One thing I’d see as an improvement would be the ability to run the tool silently without any prompts. Is this already possible? If not, would you see this as a valid improvement request?
Admin on September 14, 2021 at 10:43

Thanks Hendrik. Yes, our DataPoint Enterprise edition has this capability already to automate and schedule server-side presentations by scripting and in bulk.
Anil Dsilva on February 1, 2023 at 19:31

could you please share the link or file for Mac operating system.
Admin on February 1, 2023 at 20:31

Sorry but this is for PowerPoint on Windows only!