Presentations

A presentation is opened using the Presentation() function, provided directly by the pptx package:

from pptx import Presentation

This function returns a Presentation object which is the root of a graph containing the components that constitute a presentation, e.g. slides, shapes, etc. All existing presentation components are referenced by traversing the graph and new objects are added to the graph by calling a method on that object’s container. Consequently, python-pptx objects are generally not constructed directly.

Example:

# load a presentation
prs = Presentation(path_to_pptx_file)

# get reference to first shape in first slide
sp = prs.slides[0].shapes[0]

# add a picture shape to slide
pic = sld.shapes.add_picture(path, x, y, cx, cy)

Presentation function

This function is the only reference that must be imported to work with presentation files. Typical use interacts with many other classes, but there is no need to construct them as they are accessed using a property or method of their containing object.

pptx.Presentation(pptx=None)

Return a Presentation object loaded from pptx, where pptx can be either a path to a .pptx file (a string) or a file-like object. If pptx is missing or None, the built-in default presentation “template” is loaded.

Presentation objects

class pptx.presentation.Presentation

PresentationML (PML) presentation.

Not intended to be constructed directly. Use pptx.Presentation() to open or create a presentation.

property core_properties

Instance of CoreProperties holding the read/write Dublin Core document properties for this presentation.

property notes_master

Instance of NotesMaster for this presentation. If the presentation does not have a notes master, one is created from a default template and returned. The same single instance is returned on each call.

save(file)

Save this presentation to file, where file can be either a path to a file (a string) or a file-like object.

property slide_height

Height of slides in this presentation, in English Metric Units (EMU). Returns None if no slide width is defined. Read/write.

property slide_layouts

Sequence of SlideLayout instances belonging to the first SlideMaster of this presentation. A presentation can have more than one slide master and each master will have its own set of layouts. This property is a convenience for the common case where the presentation has only a single slide master.

property slide_master

First SlideMaster object belonging to this presentation. Typically, presentations have only a single slide master. This property provides simpler access in that common case.

slide_masters

Sequence of SlideMaster objects belonging to this presentation

property slide_width

Width of slides in this presentation, in English Metric Units (EMU). Returns None if no slide width is defined. Read/write.

slides

Slides object containing the slides in this presentation.

CoreProperties objects

Each Presentation object has a CoreProperties object accessed via its core_properties attribute that provides read/write access to the so-called core properties for the document. The core properties are author, category, comments, content_status, created, identifier, keywords, language, last_modified_by, last_printed, modified, revision, subject, title, and version.

Each property is one of three types, str, datetime.datetime, or int. String properties are limited in length to 255 characters and return an empty string (‘’) if not set. Date properties are assigned and returned as datetime.datetime objects without timezone, i.e. in UTC. Any timezone conversions are the responsibility of the client. Date properties return None if not set.

python-pptx does not automatically set any of the document core properties other than to add a core properties part to a presentation that doesn’t have one (very uncommon). If python-pptx adds a core properties part, it contains default values for the title, last_modified_by, revision, and modified properties. Client code should change properties like revision and last_modified_by explicitly if that behavior is desired.

class pptx.opc.coreprops.CoreProperties

author

string – An entity primarily responsible for making the content of the resource.

category

string – A categorization of the content of this package. Example values might include: Resume, Letter, Financial Forecast, Proposal, or Technical Presentation.

comments

string – An account of the content of the resource.

content_status

string – completion status of the document, e.g. ‘draft’

created

datetime – time of intial creation of the document

identifier

string – An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context, e.g. ISBN.

keywords

string – descriptive words or short phrases likely to be used as search terms for this document

language

string – language the document is written in

last_modified_by

string – name or other identifier (such as email address) of person who last modified the document

last_printed

datetime – time the document was last printed

modified

datetime – time the document was last modified

revision

int – number of this revision, incremented by the PowerPoint® client once each time the document is saved. Note however that the revision number is not automatically incremented by python-pptx.

subject

string – The topic of the content of the resource.

title

string – The name given to the resource.

version

string – free-form version string