Refresh & Import
An agenda is rarely finished on the first generation — items get added, dropped or reordered. The Agenda Master keeps the table of contents and divider slides together via the invisible marks, so you can change things afterwards without rebuilding. Two buttons in the footer do this — they work in opposite directions:
- ⟳ Refresh writes the pane onto the slides (pane → slides).
- 📥 Import from slides reads the slides back into the pane (slides → pane).
Remember: the pane is the master. Edit there, then click Refresh. If you reordered on the slides themselves, pull that state into the pane first with Import from slides.
⟳ Refresh
⟳ Refresh applies the current state of the pane to the slides — order, outline and appearance all come from the pane. Divider slides are physically reordered when needed so the slides follow the order in the pane; the table of contents and dividers are then re-labelled and numbers, time slots and progress are set fresh.
Typical case: you move an item up in the pane with the arrow buttons and click ⟳ Refresh — the corresponding divider slide (together with its content slides) moves to its new spot in the deck, and all numbers are correct again.
Structural changes are applied too
If you added or deleted an item or sub-item in the pane, ⟳ Refresh inserts the missing divider slides in the right place, or removes surplus ones — you do not need to regenerate the agenda. Existing items are found again by their invisible mark, so your manual changes to their slides are preserved.
What gets refreshed
Order, structure, numbering, time slots, titles and progress. When reordered, an item's content slides travel with its divider slide. Your manual design changes to the slides are preserved — only the content managed (marked) by PPPTools is refreshed.
Change the order in one place only
Refresh sets the slide order to the state of the pane. If you reordered in PowerPoint (slide sorter, sections) and want to keep that order, click 📥 Import from slides first, and only then ⟳ Refresh — otherwise the pane overwrites your slide order.
📥 Import from slides
📥 Import from slides loads an existing agenda of this presentation back into the pane. Useful when you reopen a presentation later and want to keep editing the agenda items in the pane without retyping them — or when you reordered divider slides or sections directly in PowerPoint and want to bring that state into the pane.
The Agenda Master recognises the previously generated slides by their marks and reconstructs the item list into the tabs — in the current order of the slides. So if you reordered divider slides or sections, the pane reflects that order right away. The import is read-only and does not change the slides; the numbering and labelling on the slides themselves are updated only with ⟳ Refresh.
How the two belong together
Reordered in PowerPoint → Import from slides, then Refresh. Reordered in the pane → Refresh directly. That way it is always clear which side is leading.
How the marks work
On generation, PPPTools adds invisible marks (tags) to every agenda slide and the managed elements. They record which slide is which item and what role an element plays (table of contents, divider, decoration). It is exactly these marks that enable:
- finding the slides again on refresh,
- reading the items back into the pane,
- cloning the decorative elements faithfully.
The marks are invisible on the slide and affect neither printing nor export. If you delete a marked slide by hand, the corresponding item disappears on the next import.