Working on a new idea.

So basically... My next project is going to be a PowerPoint that can make a quiz game for you in one click. My biggest hurdle so far has been the fact that PowerPoint can't store the data inputted from user forms unless that data is somehow written to a savable part of the presentation (the slides, the notes area, etc). Even if you put things in a module in VBA... Once you close PowerPoint... poof... Whatever the user inputted is gone.. Some people bundle an excel file to extrapolate data from. However, what if the excel was built into the PowerPoint presentation itself? I present to you a table... 

Yup a table and a user form... 

Why is this so important? Because tables are essentially shapes, and any shape can be made invisible. In theory, you can use an internally generated table to save the user's inputted data rather than a bulky external excel file.. 

I'm in the process of moving, so I can't work on this as much as I want to. Yes, there are bugs obviously. 

This sounds a really interesting project. Good luck!

Maybe there are other members who might like to pick up this idea as well.

Actually there's a couple of ways that an Excel spreadsheet can be saved in such a way that it isn't an external file:

1. Generated from a chart. When you make a chart in PPT, it creates an Excel spreadsheet. This excel file is stored inside the PPT file, so it's much easier to keep around. The only tricky part is access of course, but it's still embedded.

How is it embedded? The same way we'll be embedding ours for method 2

2. Add as Object. In the Insert pane, you can insert "objects". These can range from a PPT presentation (even an old one from 97 - 2003 when the formats weren't X) to even an excel file. This excel file can be easily set up in VBA to pull data from it, without it being an external file. This even gives the benefit of an easy interface for the end user to set up the quiz game. All they would need to do is change the values in the Excel file and they're done. You can even have VBA make the PPT bigger or smaller to adapt to how many questions they have. It's a pretty neat system.

PPT Dev wrote:Actually there's a couple of ways that an Excel spreadsheet can be saved in such a way that it isn't an external file:

1. Generated from a chart. When you make a chart in PPT, it creates an Excel spreadsheet. This excel file is stored inside the PPT file, so it's much easier to keep around. The only tricky part is access of course, but it's still embedded.

How is it embedded? The same way we'll be embedding ours for method 2

2. Add as Object. In the Insert pane, you can insert "objects". These can range from a PPT presentation (even an old one from 97 - 2003 when the formats weren't X) to even an excel file. This excel file can be easily set up in VBA to pull data from it, without it being an external file. This even gives the benefit of an easy interface for the end user to set up the quiz game. All they would need to do is change the values in the Excel file and they're done. You can even have VBA make the PPT bigger or smaller to adapt to how many questions they have. It's a pretty neat system.

I get what you're saying. For instance, when you add a chart, the data can be edited via Excel. However, the idea of opening a program within a program is what I'm trying to solve. I think it's a bit cumbersome for the user. I'm trying to make things as straightforward as possible with a user form and table. 

Another solution I tried was to make a custom file format (based on an encoded text file) that could load data into a user form. My issue with that is that I was trying to do some basic code obfuscation to make that file format secure, but most code obfuscation in VBA uses base64, which the libraries for are ancient. I think that eventually those libraries will become deprecated.

Small update. I just need to beautify everything and add the programming for the animations. Generally speaking. This is the basic idea. If you want to follow along, you can download it here. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SubMHXjHnd0VUcbtQXG2pLmE-BR-NyZQ/view?usp=share_link