Intro

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Setting up the Template

The template file should contain data markers following proper data marker syntax. Each copy of a given data marker will be populated with the same value. If the data marker appears in a table row or list entry, nothing will be automatically repeated if only one row is imported.

Binding Data

PowerPointTemplate has a single method for binding data to the data markers that are located in the template: PowerPointTemplate.BindData. Depending on the data source type and the number of rows in the data source, PowerPointWriter will either import a single row of data or import multiple rows.

There are several ways to import a single row of data into a presentation:

1. Use a single dimensional array
2. Use a multi-dimensional data source AND
   1. the data source only has one row of data
   2. DataBindingProperties.MaxRowsToImport is set to 1

Single Dimensional Arrays

Arrays don't have built-in means to store column names. The user must specify the column names in a string array that is passed to PowerPointTemplate.BindData at run time.

            PowerPointTemplate pptt = new PowerPointTemplate();
            pptt.Open(@"C:\DataBinding\ArrayBindingTemplate.pptx");

            string[] values = {"Hello World", "subtitle"};
            string[] colNames = {"header", "subtitle"};
            DataBindingProperties DataProps = pptt.CreateDataBindingProperties();

            pptt.BindData(values, colNames, "DataSource1", DataProps);
            pptt.Process();
            pptt.Save(Page.Response,
               "ArrayBinding.pptx",
               false);

        Dim pptt As New PowerPointTemplate()
        pptt.Open("C:\DataBinding\ArrayBindingTemplate.pptx")


        Dim values = New String() {"Hello World", "subtitle"}
        Dim colNames = New String() {"header", "subtitle"}
        Dim DataProps As DataBindingProperites = pptt.CreateDataBindingProperties();

        pptt.BindData(values, colNames, "DataSource1", DataProps);
        pptt.Process()
        pptt.Save(Page.Response, _
              "ArrayBinding.pptx", _
               False)

Multi-dimensional data sources

Data source with one row of data

If a multi-dimensional data source has only one row of data, the automatic repeating behavior will not occur. This is consistent for any of the multi-dimensional data sources supported by BindData.

Other data sources - Setting MaxRowsToImport

MaxRowsToImport is a data binding property that can be used to control how many rows of data to import from the data set. When using data sources other than a single dimensional array, a single row of data can be imported by setting MaxRowsToImport to 1.

DataBindingProperties DataProps = pptt.DataBindingProperties();
DataProps.MaxRowsToImport = 1;

For more information about importing data from different data sources see Importing Multiple Rows of Data.