Creating the perfect PowerPoint presentation is an art—an equilibrium between compelling content and striking visuals. However, for professionals and developers who need to test the efficiency of co-authoring tools or presentation software, the content itself can sometimes be secondary to the functionality being tested. That’s where the power of automation comes in, particularly in generating mock data for PowerPoint presentations.

I’ve been working on a fun side project It’s a script that allows users to create ‘fake’ PowerPoint data to simulate various scenarios and test how long it takes to read through the content in a process akin to co-authoring. For those intrigued by how this automation operates and its potential benefits, you can delve into the details on my GitHub repository.

Why Automate PowerPoint Data Generation?

The reasons for automating data generation are numerous, especially in a corporate or development setting:

• Testing Efficiency: For software developers and IT professionals, having a tool that automatically generates data can significantly aid in testing the efficiency of co-authoring tools and other collaborative features in presentation software.
• Training: Automated mock presentations can serve as training material for new employees, helping them get acquainted with presentation tools and company-specific templates.
• Benchmarking: By standardizing the length and complexity of the generated content, teams can benchmark the performance of their software or the productivity of their staff.

How Does the Automation Work?

The automation script I developed is designed to be intuitive. It populates PowerPoint slides with random text, images, and data. The script takes into account different factors like text length and complexity, mimicking real-world presentations without the need for manual data entry.

Moreover, I incorporated a timing mechanism to assess how long a ‘co-authoring’ read-through would take. This feature is invaluable for software developers who aim to improve the collaborative aspects of presentation tool

It is up now on my github