PowerPoint API duplicate slide

Hi,

I have started to use PowerPoint report generator with the PPT API package.

I managed to add slides by the

mlreportgen.ppt.add()

function based on my template, however I can't seem to find how can I duplicate already existing slides.

Any help appreciated!

Answer 1

[Abhiroop Rastogi]

Hi Tamas,

Currently there is no direct way for duplicating slides using the MATLAB report generator. But there are a couple of workarounds available for doing so, as provided below. Let me go in order starting with creating a new presentation, then moving to the approaches for duplicating slides.

% Starting with importing the package
import mlreportgen.ppt.*

ppt = Presentation('myPresentation.pptx'); % Creating the presentation object

% Creating title slide
titleSlide = add(ppt,'Title Slide');
replace(titleSlide,'Title','Create Presentation');
subtitleText = Paragraph('The ');
funcName = Text('SubText for ppt');
funcName.Font = 'Courier New';
append(subtitleText,funcName);
append(subtitleText,' Function');
replace(titleSlide,'Subtitle',subtitleText);

% Creating the content slide to be duplicated
textSlide1 = add(ppt,'Title and Content');                  
titleText = Paragraph('What You Can Do with ');
func = Text('presentations');
func.Font = 'Courier New';
append(titleText,func);
replace(textSlide1,'Title',titleText);
replace(textSlide1,'Content',{'Create presentations',...
'Specify:',{'Workflow','Explanations'},...
'Provide examples'});

% Add second slide to the presentation 
textSlide2 = add(ppt,'Title and Content');

• Approach-1: Duplicating contents of "textSlide1" into "textSlide2".

% --- Approach-1 --- %
% Duplicate first slide content into the second slide by copying all the
% placeholder's content including content formatting.
for iPlaceholder = 1:length(textSlide1.Children)
    currPlaceholder = textSlide1.Children(iPlaceholder);

    for iChildPara = 1:length(currPlaceholder.Children)
        slide1ParaObj = currPlaceholder.Children(iChildPara);
        slide2ParaObj = Paragraph(slide1ParaObj.Children(1).Content); % Copy para content
        
        % Copy para properties Level-1
        paraObjProp1 = properties(slide1ParaObj);
        for iParaProp = 1:(length(paraObjProp1)-4)
            slide2ParaObj.(paraObjProp1{iParaProp}) = slide1ParaObj.(paraObjProp1{iParaProp});
        end
        
        % Copy para properties Level-2
        for iiChildPara = 1:length(slide1ParaObj.Children)
            if iiChildPara>1
                % appending extra children for the paragraph
                append(slide2ParaObj,slide1ParaObj.Children(iiChildPara).Content);
            end
            paraObjProp2 = properties(slide1ParaObj.Children(iiChildPara));
            for iParaProp = 1:(length(paraObjProp2)-4)
                slide2ParaObj.Children(iiChildPara).(paraObjProp2{iParaProp})...
                    = slide1ParaObj.Children(iiChildPara).(paraObjProp2{iParaProp});
            end
        end
        textSlide2.Children(iPlaceholder).add(slide2ParaObj);
    end
end

close(ppt);
rptview(ppt);

• Approach-2: An array of objects is created containing identical content and are placed consecutively.

% --- Approach-2 --- %
% Duplicate slides consecutively with the same content
for i=1:numSlides
    textSlide(i) = add(ppt,'Title and Content');

    titleText = Paragraph('What You Can Do with ');
    func = Text('presentations');
    func.Font = 'Courier New';
    append(titleText,func);

    replace(textSlide(i),'Title',titleText);
    replace(textSlide(i),'Content',{'Create presentations',...
        'Specify:',{'Workflow','Explanations'},...
        'Provide examples'});
end

close(ppt);
rptview(ppt);

Note: The duplicating of slides using Approach-1 works for text content only, as duplicating slides feature is under development.