A CLI tool for programmatic PowerPoint (.pptx) editing using Microsoft's Open XML SDK. Takes a .pptx file and a JSON edit manifest, produces a modified presentation with text replacements, shape edits, speaker notes, slide manipulation, and comments — no macros, no compatibility issues.

Ships as a single ~12MB native binary. No runtime, no Docker required.

We evaluated three approaches for programmatic presentation editing:

Open XML SDK is the gold standard — it's Microsoft's own library for manipulating Office documents. Text replacement handles multi-run spans, formatting is always preserved, and all slide operations work correctly.

brew install henrybloomingdale/tools/pptx-review

git clone https://github.com/henrybloomingdale/pptx-review.git
cd pptx-review
make install    # Builds + installs to /usr/local/bin

Requires .NET 8 SDK for building (brew install dotnet@8). The resulting binary is self-contained — no .NET runtime needed to run it.

make docker     # Builds Docker image
docker run --rm -v "$(pwd):/work" -w /work pptx-review input.pptx edits.json -o edited.pptx

# Basic usage
pptx-review input.pptx edits.json -o edited.pptx

# Pipe JSON from stdin
cat edits.json | pptx-review input.pptx -o edited.pptx

# Custom author name
pptx-review input.pptx edits.json -o edited.pptx --author "Dr. Smith"

# Dry run (validate without modifying)
pptx-review input.pptx edits.json --dry-run

# JSON output for pipelines
pptx-review input.pptx edits.json -o edited.pptx --json

# Read presentation content
pptx-review input.pptx --read --json

{
  "author": "Reviewer Name",
  "changes": [
    {
      "type": "replace_text",
      "find": "old text",
      "replace": "new text"
    },
    {
      "type": "replace_text",
      "find": "slide-specific text",
      "replace": "new text",
      "slide": 2
    },
    {
      "type": "set_text",
      "slide": 1,
      "shape": "Title 1",
      "text": "New Title"
    },
    {
      "type": "set_notes",
      "slide": 1,
      "text": "Speaker notes for slide 1"
    },
    {
      "type": "delete_slide",
      "slide": 5
    },
    {
      "type": "duplicate_slide",
      "slide": 3
    },
    {
      "type": "reorder_slide",
      "slide": 2,
      "position": 5
    },
    {
      "type": "add_slide",
      "layout": "Blank",
      "position": 3
    }
  ],
  "comments": [
    {
      "slide": 1,
      "text": "This slide needs a better title"
    }
  ]
}

Each comment needs:

• slide — slide number (1-indexed) to attach the comment to
• text — the comment content

Compare two .pptx files semantically — detects slide content changes, speaker notes differences, comment modifications, shape additions/removals, and image changes.

# Compare two presentations
pptx-review --diff old.pptx new.pptx

# JSON output for automation
pptx-review --diff old.pptx new.pptx --json

# Use as a git textconv driver
pptx-review --textconv presentation.pptx

Track .pptx changes in git with human-readable diffs:

# Print setup instructions
pptx-review --git-setup

Add to .gitattributes:

*.pptx diff=pptx

Add to .gitconfig:

[diff "pptx"]
    textconv = pptx-review --textconv

Now git diff shows readable text diffs for PowerPoint files.

Extract presentation content as structured JSON:

pptx-review input.pptx --read --json

Output:

{
  "slides": [
    {
      "number": 1,
      "layout": "Title Slide",
      "shapes": [
        {"name": "Title 1", "type": "textbox", "text": "Presentation Title"},
        {"name": "Subtitle 2", "type": "textbox", "text": "By Author Name"}
      ],
      "notes": "Speaker notes here",
      "comments": []
    }
  ],
  "slide_count": 10
}

make              # Build native binary for current platform (~12MB, self-contained)
make install      # Build + install to /usr/local/bin
make all          # Cross-compile for macOS ARM64, macOS x64, Linux x64, Linux ARM64
make docker       # Build Docker image
make test         # Run test (requires TEST_PPTX=path/to/presentation.pptx)
make test-read    # Read a presentation (requires TEST_PPTX=path/to/presentation.pptx)
make clean        # Remove build artifacts
make help         # Show all targets

• 0 — All changes and comments applied successfully (or read mode completed)
• 1 — One or more edits failed (partial success possible)

With --json, the tool outputs structured results:

{
  "input": "presentation.pptx",
  "output": "presentation_edited.pptx",
  "author": "Dr. Smith",
  "changes_attempted": 5,
  "changes_succeeded": 5,
  "comments_attempted": 2,
  "comments_succeeded": 2,
  "success": true,
  "results": [
    { "index": 0, "type": "comment", "success": true, "message": "Comment added to slide 1" },
    { "index": 0, "type": "replace_text", "success": true, "message": "Replaced 3 occurrence(s) across all slides" }
  ]
}

1. Copies the input .pptx to the output path
2. Opens the presentation using Open XML SDK (PresentationDocument)
3. Adds comments first (before changes modify the slide structure)
4. Applies changes (text replacement, shape edits, notes, slide operations)
5. Handles multi-run text matching (text spanning multiple XML runs)
6. Preserves original formatting (RunProperties cloned from source)
7. Saves and reports results

• Slides → SlidePart objects linked via SlideIdList
• Shapes → Shape elements in ShapeTree, identified by NonVisualDrawingProperties.Name
• Text → TextBody → Paragraph → Run → Text
• Notes → NotesSlidePart with body placeholder
• Comments → SlideCommentsPart + CommentAuthorsPart
• Layouts → SlideLayoutPart linked through SlideMasterPart

# Build native binary (requires .NET 8 SDK)
make build

# Build and run locally
dotnet run -- input.pptx edits.json -o edited.pptx

# Read a presentation
dotnet run -- input.pptx --read --json

# Cross-compile all platforms
make all
# → build/osx-arm64/pptx-review  (macOS Apple Silicon)
# → build/osx-x64/pptx-review    (macOS Intel)
# → build/linux-x64/pptx-review  (Linux x64)
# → build/linux-arm64/pptx-review (Linux ARM64)

MIT — see LICENSE.

Built by CinciNeuro for AI-assisted presentation editing workflows.