power-pptx

Getting Started

power-pptx is the actively-maintained fork of python-pptx. It creates, reads and updates PowerPoint 2007+ (.pptx) files on any Python-capable platform — no Microsoft PowerPoint required. This guide gets you from zero to a saved deck.

Requirements

  • Python 3.9 – 3.13 (3.9 through 3.13 are tested in CI)
  • Runtime dependencies install automatically: Pillow, XlsxWriter,lxml, typing_extensions

Install

pip install power-pptx

The distribution is named power-pptx on PyPI but imports aspower_pptx. The 2.0 release renamed the package from pptx so the fork and upstream python-pptx can be installed side-by-side.

Optional dependencies

ExtraNeeded for
cairosvgAuto-rasterising the PNG fallback in add_svg_picture(...)
pyyamlDesignTokens.from_yaml(...)
soffice (LibreOffice) on PATHPresentation.render_thumbnails()
pdftoppm / pypdfium2The PDF→PNG split path in the thumbnail renderer

Migrating from python-pptx

The fork is drop-in compatible with upstream 1.0.2. Replace pptx withpower_pptx in your imports and everything else keeps working:

# before
from pptx import Presentation

# after
from power_pptx import Presentation

Your first deck

A minimal end-to-end pattern — open, add a slide, a diagram, some text, tidy up, save:

from power_pptx import Presentation, BBox, audit
from power_pptx.diagrams import horizontal_pipeline

prs = Presentation()
slide = prs.slides.add_slide(prs.slide_layouts[5])   # Title Only
slide.shapes.title.text = "Pipeline overview"

horizontal_pipeline(
    slide,
    BBox.from_inches(0.5, 2.5, 9, 2.2),
    steps=["Extract", "Classify", "Enrich", "Output"],
    accent="#0B5CFF",
)

slide.shapes.add_text(
    BBox.from_inches(0.5, 5.5, 9, 1),
    text="Four-stage data pipeline.",
    align="center", size_pt=14, color="#666666",
)

slide.tidy()                  # lint + safe auto-fixes
print(audit(prs).markdown())  # optional whole-deck report
prs.save("out.pptx")

Core concepts in sixty seconds

  • Presentation — the deck. Presentation() starts blank;Presentation("file.pptx") opens an existing one. Callprs.save("out.pptx") once at the end.
  • Slides & layouts — prs.slides.add_slide(prs.slide_layouts[i])appends a slide from a layout (index 5 = Title Only, 6 = Blank in the default template).
  • BBox — an immutable rectangular region in EMU.BBox.from_inches(x, y, w, h) splats directly into every add_* API. Never write raw EMU integers — use Inches, Pt, Cm.
  • Colours — hex strings ("#0B5CFF"), tuples andRGBColor all work anywhere a colour is accepted.
  • Space-aware authoring — the reason this fork exists. ReadSpace-Aware Authoring before generating decks from dynamic content.

Where next