A system and method of retrieving a target set of data from a presentation file. The system comprises: an extractor that extracts data elements from the presentation file, associates a unique identifier to each data element, and stores each data element and associated identifier in an extraction object; and a formatter that selects the target set of the data from the extraction object based on a set of references in a target object. Each reference conforms to a predefined set of rules that allow, for instance, data elements to be addressed by page, object, row and column.