There's a phrase I use: "I wound up learning more than I really wanted to know about ....". Recently I have had to write some code in VBA for Powerpoint. I regard all presentation programs as if not abominations then certainly not something a Real Man would use. Real Men speak clearly, from memory, without visual aids and for no more than three minutes. But here I was this week, searching the Internet for some code that would break links between a workbook and a presentation. My excuse is that I didn't have time to read about the Powerpoint object model and work it out for myself. I know I can record a macro, but macros have a habit of referring to "ActiveWhatever" and what you really need is the name of the object and it collection so you can loop through all the text boxes on all the slides - or whatever.
The real point isn't about Powerpoint, it's about the manager who told everyone I could automate a presentation with about fifty links to different graphs and tables in a workbook. So that someone else could just press a couple of buttons and what used to take two guys two weeks would now take one guy a couple of days (there's some unavoidable manual fiddling involved). I had a rough idea it could be done, but with Office you never know if you're going to be tripped up by some arcane detail in the object model, forcing you to a complete re-design. I didn't know it could be done. The manager believed that if it could be done, I could do it. When someone has that kind of faith in you, it's very motivating. And it's the first time that's happened at The Bank.
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