Powerpoint 2007 linking to external content

Question

I have about 50 presentation, and one text box is the same for all of them. The problem is that if I need to edit that text box I have to do the same thing 50 times. Is there a way to have it load that text from an external file?
Thank you in advance

Solution

I'd suggest inserting your text as an Object, linked to a text file, or WordPad or whatever file format you text is in. You can then right-click on the object and hit Refresh to update it in your slides.

Comments

[bfsarmi]

Thank you for the suggestion. The problem I encounter with that is that the linking is broken if you move the presentation to a different computer. Is there a way to do a relative link, if both the presentation and text file are in the same folder? Thanks again!

[Rhys Gibson]

Have you tried putting your file on a shared folder and creating your link as a UNC pathname? i.e. link to \\server\folder\file.rtf

[bfsarmi]

But that would work only if I'm on the same network with the server at all times, right? I would need to be mobile and also email some of them. I was hoping there would be a way to just link form the same folder without putting in the whole path. Is that possible? Thanks again for your help!

[Rhys Gibson]

Nope. Relative pathnames don't work, it has to be fully qualified. I can't think of another way of doing what you want.

[Xavier Nodet]

The Master Slides are embedded into the presentation itself. They are not shared among multiple presentations (at least, not dynamically). So I can't imagine how this would work.