Add Slides

To add a slide to a presentation, use the PPT API to add slide based on a slide layout defined in the PowerPoint^® presentation template. If the template does not include slide layout that meets your requirements, you can add a slide layout. For details, see Add a Slide Layout.

To add a slide, use the add method with an mlreportgen.ppt.Presentation object. For example, using the default PPT API template, you can add a slide using the Title and Content slide layout.

import mlreportgen.ppt.*;
ppt = Presentation('myPresentation');
slide1 = add(ppt,'Title and Content');

When you add a slide, the PPT API creates an mlreportgen.ppt.Slide object. However, you cannot add a slide by using a Slide constructor.

Specify the Order of a Slide

By default, the order in which you add slides in a PPT API program determines the order in which the slides appear. For example, this code makes the titleSlide slide the first slide in the presentation. The contentSlide slide is the second slide.

ppt = Presentation('myPresentation');
titleSlide = add(ppt,'Title Slide');
contentSlide = add(ppt,'Title and Content');

When you add a slide, to specify explicitly the order in which it appears, you can:

• Specify the slide the new slide precedes. This approach is useful to keep slides together as you add or delete slides.

• Specify an index indicating the numerical position of the slide in the presentation. This approach is useful when you want a slide to appear always in the same numerical position.

The first approach places the new slide immediately before slide you specify. If you created the reference slide using the PPT API, you can specify the Slide object. For example, using the default PPT API template, this code causes the pictureSlide to appear immediately before the introSlide.

ppt = Presentation('myPresentation');
titleSlide = add(ppt,'Title Slide');
introSlide = add(ppt,'Title Slide');
pictureSlide = add(ppt,'Title and Picture',introSlide);

In a presentation created using PowerPoint, adding a slide immediately before a slide that you created using PowerPoint requires a few steps.

1. In PowerPoint, identify the position of the reference slide you want the new slide to precede.

2. Open the PPT API program and give a name to the reference slide you want to position the new slide before. For example, assume that the reference slide is the second slide in a PowerPoint presentation.

   ppt = Presentation('myPresentation','myPresentation');
   open(ppt);
   
   ppt.Children(2).Name = 'ReferenceSlide';
   close(ppt);
   

3. To identify the reference slide object, use the slide name. Add the new slide relative to the reference slide.

   ppt = Presentation('myPresentation', 'myPresentation');
   open(ppt);
   
   refSlide = find(ppt, 'ReferenceSlide');
   add(ppt, 'Blank', refSlide);
   
   close(ppt);
   

To use the second approach, specify an index representing the numerical position for the slide. For example, using the default PPT API template, this code makes pictureSlide the second slide in the presentation.

ppt = Presentation('myPresentation');

titleSlide = add(ppt,'Title Slide');
introSlide = add(ppt,'Title and Content');
pictureSlide = add(ppt,'Title and Picture',2);

Specify the Slide Master

A template can have multiple slide masters. Two or more slide masters can have a child slide layout with the same name. By default, when you specify the slide layout using PPT API, the API uses the first slide layout that has the name you specify. If you specify a slide master in an add method, specify the slide master argument immediately after the slide layout argument. For example, this code uses the Title Slide slide layout that is a child of the myCustomMaster slide master.

ppt = Presentation('myPresentation');
titleSlide = add(ppt,'Title Slide',myCustomMaster);