PPTX creation, editing, and analysis

Overview

A user may ask you to create, edit, or analyze the contents of a .pptx file. A .pptx file is essentially a ZIP archive containing XML files and other resources that you can read or edit. You have different tools and workflows available for different tasks.

Reading and analyzing content

Text extraction

If you just need to read the text contents of a presentation, you should convert the document to markdown:

# Convert document to markdown
python -m markitdown path-to-file.pptx

Raw XML access

You need raw XML access for: comments, speaker notes, slide layouts, animations, design elements, and complex formatting. For any of these features, you'll need to unpack a presentation and read its raw XML contents.

Unpacking a file

python ooxml/scripts/unpack.py <office_file> <output_dir>

Note: The unpack.py script is located at skills/pptx/ooxml/scripts/unpack.py relative to the project root. If the script doesn't exist at this path, use find . -name "unpack.py" to locate it.

Key file structures

• ppt/presentation.xml - Main presentation metadata and slide references
• ppt/slides/slide{N}.xml - Individual slide contents (slide1.xml, slide2.xml, etc.)
• ppt/notesSlides/notesSlide{N}.xml - Speaker notes for each slide
• ppt/comments/modernComment_*.xml - Comments for specific slides
• ppt/slideLayouts/ - Layout templates for slides
• ppt/slideMasters/ - Master slide templates
• ppt/theme/ - Theme and styling information
• ppt/media/ - Images and other media files