Create Templated Shape (e.g., Tombstones)

You can use Macabacus to quickly generate templated shapes, such as tombstones, with a consistent appearance based on templates you define in PowerPoint. Your organization might have a single template used firm-wide or multiple templates for different business groups or deal types.

Macabacus now offers two ways to generate templated shapes:

1. Enter Manually: Create a single shape by entering data directly into a wizard.
2. Import from Excel: Generate multiple shapes simultaneously using data from an Excel file, saving hours for large-scale shape creation. For example, create hundreds of tombstones with a single click.

You can use Macabacus to quickly generate templated shapes (e.g., tombstones) based on templates you define in PowerPoint. Templates ensure consistency in appearance and layout, and you can create one or more templates for different use cases, such as business groups or deal types.

• Text boxes containing static text and/or placeholders for dynamic text (e.g., advisory role),
• Static images that appear in all shapes created from the template (e.g., your company logo),
• Placeholders for dynamic images (e.g., client logos), and
• Decorative shapes that do not contain dynamic content but contribute to the visual design (e.g., tombsotne border).

To create a tombstone template, open a blank presentation and delete any shapes that appear by default. Lay out the individual tombstone shapes described above as desired, using the guidance below to define dynamic text and image placeholders:

Create a text placeholder by enclosing dummy text in square brackets (e.g., "[Client Name]"). The dummy text should indicate the nature of replacement text, and is used in Macabacus' Create Tombstone wizard to prompt the user for input. Be sure to consider how paragraph formatting properties (e.g., text wrapping, shrink text on overflow) handle replacement text of varying lengths.

An image placeholder shape defines the region into which Macabacus will fit a replacement image. The size of this placeholder defines the maximum dimensions of the replacement image, not its exact dimensions (to avoid image distortion).

To identify a shape in your template as an image placeholder, append a position code to the shape's name in PowerPoint's Selection Pane. Position codes are in the format [IMG-{horizontal code}-{vertical code}] , where horizontal codes that begin with X and vertical codes that begin with Y are defined as follows:

For example, the code [IMG-XC-YT] instructs Macabacus to horizontally center the replacement image within and align it to the top edge of the area defined by the placeholder. For images that do not appear at the top or bottom of the tombstone, you should generally using vertical position code YC .

Once you have created the individual tombstone shapes and arranged them as desired, group them to create a template. Use PowerPoint's Selection Pane to name the grouped shape appropriately. This name is used to select the desired template in Macabacus' Create Tombstone wizard. Any ungrouped shapes in your presentation will be ignored by Macabacus.

If you require multiple templates, create them as described above in the same presentation (either on the same slide or separate slides). All of your tombstone templates should have the exact same height and width to avoid slide layout issues.

If multiple Macabacus users will create tombstones, save your presentation to a shared location to which all such users have read access privileges. Otherwise, if only one person in the organization is responsible for creating tombstones, the presentation can be saved locally. Ensure that nothing but the tombstone templates presentation resides in the containing folder.

Then, open Macabacus' Settings dialog and go to the Templated Shapes section to specify the path to the folder where the presentation is saved. All users who will be creating tombstones will also need to specify this path in their own Macabacus settings (this is not a shared setting).

Option 1: Generate Manually

1. Navigate to Macabacus > Create Templated Shape.
2. Select your desired template from the Shape Template dropdown.
3. Enter text and upload images in the wizard prompts. You can upload images from your file system or select images already on the slide.
4. Click OK to generate the shape.

Option 2: Import from Excel & Generate Multiple Shapes

Prepare Your Excel File:

• Each row represents one shape (e.g., tombstone) to generate.
• Column headers (i.e., fields) must match placeholders in the template (e.g., a column titled Logo  corresponds to an image placeholder named Logo ).
• Save all images referenced in the spreadsheet to a designated folder. File names in the Excel sheet must match the actual image file names exactly (e.g., client_logo.png ).
• Include a field for "UID" if you would like to automatically append a UID to each generated shape's name. This can help facilitate the bulk publishing of your templated shapes as Meta Content.

Generate Shapes in Bulk:

• Go to Macabacus > Create Templated Shape and select Import from Excel.
• Provide the paths to the Excel file and the images folder.
• Click Generate Shapes to create all shapes row by row based on the Excel data.

_{This documentation refers to the latest Macabacus version. Some features and descriptions of these features may not apply to older versions of Macabacus. Update your Macabacus software to take advantage of the latest features.}