How to vote directly in PowerPoint?

Many presenters performing in front of audience with presentations in PowerPoint that comes to mind is the idea that it would be nice to reach out to their listeners with a specific question, take a poll or even questionnaire. Thus, it is desirable that the results would be an integral part of the presentation.

For this purpose, we decided to modify our service presentations.




We made a simple html, which you can use to obtain the text of the question required a vote and, in tabular form, the results of the vote:
the the the the the

How, in Your opinion, will change the prices for Apple products?	Voice
Increase	84
Remains unchanged	49
Fall	13
don't know...	25

This html table can serve as a data source for Excel. The connection is with Web Data Connection. Then the standard Excel graph that you can import (paste as link) into any program that supports linking to Excel charts, for example, in PowerPoint. This reference Excel document is already configured on the test vote.

But it turned out one problem. By default, Excel allows you to update data from a source not more than 1 time per minute. By using a VBA macro this limitation has been circumvented.

macro

Public dTime As Date
Private Sub auto_open()
Run "RefreshIt"
End Sub
Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean)
On Error Resume Next
If Cancel = False Then Application.OnTime dTime, "RefreshIt", , False,
On Error GoTo 0
End Sub

Sub RefreshIt()
i = Int(Sheets(1).Range("H25").Value)
If i > 0 Then
On Error Resume Next
Sheets(1).Range("A1").QueryTable.Refresh
If i < 5 Then i = 5
If i < 10 Then
dt = "00:00:0" & i
Else
dt = "00:00:" &i
End If
dTime = Time + TimeValue(dt)
Application.OnTime dTime, "RefreshIt"
End If
End Sub

The result is a chart with voting results updated on a rolling votes almost in real time.

An example of a "live" graph in PowerPoint:



P. S. the Cost of voting is equal to the standard rate for an SMS to long number to another subscriber (free to 2 rubles., depending on the tariff plan).

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru