Control Which Slides are Shown in Google Slides

Include or exclude specific slides from your output dynamically using visibility conditions

When you generate presentations with Slideform, you can select which slides from your template will be included in the presentation using a visibility condition. This can be especially helpful if you have a large number of slides in a master template and you want to show a subset of those slides to particular recipients of the presentation or report.

Let's walk through a simple example.

1. Add visibility conditions to your slide template

In your Google Slides or PowerPoint template, add a visibility condition to the speaker notes for any slide that you want to dynamically include or exclude. For example, below I have a slide that should only be included in the deck for enterprise-level clients.

In this example, if the value for {{tier}} is Enterprise, then this slide will be shown in the output. I can set the value of the {{tier}} placeholder for each client in my Google Sheet, or use a different data source.

Another great example is if you want to include or exclude an entire section of the presentation, depending on the recipient. For example, one of my clients may be tracking TikTok performance while other clients are not. I can put all the TikTok metrics slides in my slide template, but I can simply exclude theme for any client where the {{show_tiktok}} pragma is set to "No".

2. Example visibility conditions 

Text:

visible:  {{pragma}}   == 'value'

where the pragma is filled with a text string and the value is text enclosed in single quotes

Numeric:

visible:  {{pragma}}   > X

where the pragma is filled with a number and the value X is also a number

Composite statements:

visible:  {{pragma}}   == 'value' and   {{pragma2}}   > 1

You can also combine expressions using or, and, and other operators.

3. Map the pragmas used in the visibility condition to your data

As with any other pragma, you must either map the pragma used in the visibility condition to a data source or you can enter a value for it when you generate the slides. Visibility pragmas can also be used in Bulk Mode. 

In the example above, I mapped the {{tier}} to a specific field in my Google Sheet data source.

4. Troubleshooting slide visibility in your output

Some common errors when setting visibility pragmas:

1. Make sure the text of the pragma value and the string you enter as the matching value are exactly the same. Case and spaces matter. And be sure to use single quotes around the value.
2. If comparing numbers, be sure that the value of the pragma is actually a number. If using bulk mode to set this pragma, make sure the format is set to either integer or float.

Tutorial walkthrough: