PPTX

PPTX Skill

Quick Reference

Reading Content

# Text extraction
python -m markitdown presentation.pptx

# Visual overview
python scripts/thumbnail.py presentation.pptx

# Raw XML
python scripts/unpack.py presentation.pptx unpacked/

Editing Workflow

Read references/editing.md for OOXML editing details.

1. Analyze template with thumbnail.py
2. Unpack → manipulate slides → edit content → clean → pack

Creating from Scratch

Two approaches:

• HTML→PPTX (via html2pptx.js): Read references/html2pptx.md
• PptxGenJS (JavaScript library): Read references/pptxgenjs.md

Creating from a Template

Detailed workflow using inventory.py, rearrange.py, and replace.py:

1. Extract template text AND create visual thumbnail grid:

   python -m markitdown template.pptx > template-content.md
   python scripts/thumbnail.py template.pptx
   

2. Analyze template and save inventory:

   python scripts/inventory.py working.pptx text-inventory.json
   

3. Duplicate, reorder, and delete slides:

   python scripts/rearrange.py template.pptx working.pptx 0,34,34,50,52
   

4. Apply text replacements:

   python scripts/replace.py working.pptx replacement-text.json output.pptx
   

Design Ideas

Don't create boring slides. Plain bullets on a white background won't impress anyone. Consider ideas from this list for each slide.

Before Starting

• Pick a bold, content-informed color palette: The palette should feel designed for THIS topic. If swapping your colors into a completely different presentation would still "work," you haven't made specific enough choices.
• Dominance over equality: One color should dominate (60-70% visual weight), with 1-2 supporting tones and one sharp accent.
• Dark/light contrast: Dark backgrounds for title + conclusion slides, light for content ("sandwich" structure).
• Commit to a visual motif: Pick ONE distinctive element and repeat it — rounded image frames, icons in colored circles, thick single-side borders.

Color Palettes

Typography

Avoid

• Don't repeat the same layout — vary columns, cards, and callouts across slides
• Don't center body text — left-align paragraphs and lists; center only titles
• Don't default to blue — pick colors that reflect the specific topic
• Don't create text-only slides — add images, icons, charts, or visual elements
• NEVER use accent lines under titles — hallmark of AI-generated slides; use whitespace or background color instead

QA (Required)

Assume there are problems. Your job is to find them.

Content QA

python -m markitdown output.pptx

Check for missing content, typos, wrong order. When using templates, check for leftover placeholder text:

python -m markitdown output.pptx | grep -iE "xxxx|lorem|ipsum|this.*(page|slide).*layout"

Visual QA

Convert slides to images and inspect for overlapping elements, text overflow, contrast issues, and positioning problems. See Converting to Images.

Verification Loop

1. Generate slides → Convert to images → Inspect
2. List issues found (if none found, look again more critically)
3. Fix issues
4. Re-verify affected slides — one fix often creates another problem
5. Repeat until a full pass reveals no new issues

Do not declare success until you've completed at least one fix-and-verify cycle.

Scripts

Converting to Images

Convert presentations to individual slide images for visual inspection:

python scripts/soffice.py --headless --convert-to pdf output.pptx
pdftoppm -jpeg -r 150 output.pdf slide

This creates slide-01.jpg, slide-02.jpg, etc.

To re-render specific slides after fixes:

pdftoppm -jpeg -r 150 -f N -l N output.pdf slide-fixed

Dependencies

• pip install "markitdown[pptx]" - text extraction
• pip install Pillow - thumbnail grids
• npm install -g pptxgenjs - creating from scratch (PptxGenJS approach)
• npm install -g playwright - HTML rendering (html2pptx approach)
• LibreOffice (soffice) - PDF conversion (via scripts/soffice.py)
• Poppler (pdftoppm) - PDF to images
• pip install defusedxml - secure XML parsing