topic Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects in Alteryx Designer Desktop Discussions

Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

knozawa — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 00:31:10 GMT

Hello,

I'm looking to output a PowerPoint using a PowerPoint template depending on different projects.

Only a few fields will be updated in the PowerPoint slides based on upstream data.

I thought about using a reporting tools, but it seems like I cannot input a PowerPoint as a template input file, so modifying XML file would be a better choice in Alteryx.

There was a similar conversation in the Alteryx community forum: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Auto-populate-powerpoint-template-with-Alteryx/td-p/52999

If I'm understanding it correctly, this approach is to:

1. extract the PowerPoint to xml first

2. modify the xml file in Alteryx using the upstream data

3. Alteryx will produce the modified XML file, not PowerPoint

4. use the modified XML for different projects

I tried to follow what they've done using the XML input file, so I used a 7zip to extract the PowerPoint and it produced many xml files. However, I was not sure which XML file was the one that contained actual content in the slide deck to modify. Does anyone know which one to use? Also, if there is a better way to accomplish this, I appreciate any inputs!

Sincerely,

knozawa

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

kelly_gilbert — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 14:55:23 GMT

Hi, @knozawa - the XML files you want to edit are in the ppt --> slides folder. Inside \ppt\slides, you'll find a separate XML file for each slide in your presentation (slide1.xml, slide2.xml, etc.)

I use this method myself, and it works well. I'll be interested to see if there are other ideas for accomplishing this!

The general method is:

Create a PowerPoint template with placeholders for each value you want to replace (e.g. if your fieldname is open_roles, then insert {{open_roles}} in the appropriate place in the PowerPoint slide.
Unzip the template pptx file
Read in the XML file (for example, if you want to edit slide #3, then input ppt\slides\slide3.xml)
Modify the slide XML by replacing your placeholder text with the field value
Output the updated slide XML (for example, if you are modifying slide #3, then output ppt\slides\slide3.xml -- you are replacing the original slide3.xml with the modified version)
Re-zip the files and save the zip file with a .pptx extension

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

knozawa — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 20:40:10 GMT

@kelly_gilbert ,

Thank you for your detailed reply!

I followed your instruction and have questions:

Q1. When you replaced the value, did you replace whole thing {{open_roles}} to sales for example (meaning the {{}} will be removed in the modified xml file)?

Q2. At the last step, did you re-zip the whole folder that contained all the xml files using 7zip or just compressed (zipped) folder from the file explorer directly? I tried both ways and changed the .zip to .pptx. When I tried to open the PowerPoint, it showed an error message:"PowerPoint found unreadable content in ...There was an error accessing...".

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

kelly_gilbert — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 21:46:28 GMT

Q1 - Correct - replace the whole thing, including the brackets, like replace([your_xml_field], "{{sales}}", tostring([your_sales_field]))

The curly brackets are there to identify the placeholders in your template vs. other text in your template. For example, the word "sales" could occur in the title of your slide, so you don't want to replace that. We only want to replace sales when it is surrounded by curly brackets.

Q2 - correct, zip all of the files (including [Content Types].xml) into a new zip file, and make sure that the folder structure (_rels, customXml, etc.) is present in your zip file.

I haven't tried using 7zip to create the zip file, but I don't see any reason why that wouldn't work. I'm using Python zipfile to create my zip file, but I have also done it manually from the File Explorer, which also works.

One other issue that could cause that error is when the replacement text has certain characters in it (XML predefined entities, such as & " ' < >). You will need to replace those with their name (e.g. "&" for ampersand or "<" for <).

For example, say you have the placeholder {{department_name}}, and the actual department_name is Planning & Analytics. Inserting Planning & Analytics in the XML will cause an error due to the ampersand (&). You can fix it by replacing the & with the character name, "&"
Example: replace([your_xml_field], "&", "&")

It will appear as "Planning & Analytics" in the raw XML, but it will appear as "Planning & Analytics" in PowerPoint.

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

kelly_gilbert — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 21:56:31 GMT

Two other things to check:

Make sure that your output file has the exact same name and location as the original. For example, if you are editing ppt\slides\slide2.xml, make sure that your output tool is outputting to the exact same folder/file name.
Make sure that your Output Data tool is not outputting any additional characters that would make the XML invalid. Make sure that First Row Contains Field Names is NOT checked, and make sure that the delimiter is something that won't occur in your XML file ("\0" is a good delimiter to use).
Make sure that the Code Page on your output is UTF-8

If you're still having issues, please share an example of your workflow with some fake data, as well as your .pptx template, so we can take a look at what might be happening!

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

knozawa — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 00:14:55 GMT

@kelly_gilbert

Thank you for your help! I still have issue opening the corrupted PowerPoint.

I wanted to attach the PowerPoint and Zip folder, but it seems like there is a restriction on uploading those file types in the Alteryx Community forum.

Here is the screenshot:
1. original PowerPoint ("DELETE.pptx")

2. {{delete}} was updated to DELETEDELETE in slide1.xml

3. The DELETE zipped folder's extension was updated to .pptx ("DELETE (2).pptx")

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

knozawa — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 00:33:36 GMT

@kelly_gilbert

I also tested without modifying the slide1.xml file and re-zipped the DELETE folder and renamed .zip to .pptx.
Same error occurred.

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

kelly_gilbert — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 01:24:17 GMT

That was a great idea to test rezipping the file without modifying it! That tells us the problem is with the zip and not the XML. Are you possibly zipping the outer folder?

Make sure that you're just zippng the _rels, ppt, etc. folders, and the [Content_Types].xml file, and not the folder that contains them.

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

knozawa — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 01:41:02 GMT

@kelly_gilbert

Thank you very much! I was creating zip file using the DELETE folder instead of zippng the _rels, ppt, etc. folders, and the [Content_Types].xml file.

If you have any tips on your process, could you please tell me:
1. When there are multiple projects to update the PowerPoint using the template, do you manually create the unzipped folder?
2. Do you embed the python code into the python tool in the alteryx workflow to zip the files and rename it to .pptx?

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

kelly_gilbert — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 22:37:50 GMT

I'm so glad you got it working!

Q1 - I use Python to unzip the file as well as re-zip it after edits. I just finished converting the full edit process to Python, so my current workflow is:

Use standard Alteryx tools to combine, summarize, and reshape the data
Feed the final data into a Python tool
In the Python tool:
- Unzip the .pptx template
- Make the text replacements
- Re-zip the .pptx template

However, if you want to use standard Alteryx tools for the text replacement, you could either use two Python tools (Python tool to unzip file --> replace text in Alteryx --> Python tool to re-zip file).

You can also use the Run Command tool with 7Zip to un-zip and re-zip the files.

Here is a post with an example for unzipping a file: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/How-do-I-use-the-Run-Command-tool-fror-unzipping-a-file/m-p/50830/highlight/true#M19229
Here is a post with an example file for creating a zip https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Zip-files/m-p/691190/highlight/true#M162843

One more idea: if you only have to edit specific slides, you don't have to unzip the file. You can import the slide XML directly using an Alteryx Input Data tool (select the .pptx file, then choose .zip as the file format, then click on File in Archive to select your slide XML file).
Then, once you've made your replacements, write out the new XML file to a temp directory.

Then, use Run Command to update the .zip file by adding the newly changed files (update command from the 7zip manual: http://7zip.bugaco.com/7zip/MANUAL/cmdline/commands/update.htm)

Note that this will modify the original zip file, so you will want to keep an extra copy of your blank template! Or, use a .bat file to copy the template .pptx first, and then update the copy.

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

knozawa — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 22:57:17 GMT

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation @kelly_gilbert !

I will try your suggestions and choose one.

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

knozawa — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 06:18:14 GMT

@kelly_gilbert

I created another question Unzip and zip files in Python tool because the topic is different.
If you can give me some suggestions, that would be really helpful.

Sincerely,

knozawa

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

Famac — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 12:55:30 GMT

Hi there,

This conversation was pretty helpful for my process. Thank you 🙏. I managed to design the workflow of editing the tags of a pptx with my data accordingly.

However, I cannot figure out how to convert the xml file back to pptx and then to pdf without losing the powerpoint format.

Since my pptx template will remain as one slide I did not zipped or used any additional folder for my slides as you describe.

I manually saved the pptx file as xml file and then I ran the workflow. The output is the one same xml file as the input and opens to powerpoint with the edits correctly 🙂. But no conversion to pptx or pdf can be completed successfully, either manually with zipping or with cmd 🤔. Do you have any idea why is this happening, or what can I try to convert the xml to pdf by keeping the presentation format?

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

Paridhi_Agrawal — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 15:47:02 GMT

Hi kelly_gilbert

I am following this thread, and I am facing an issue.

I write the values to be replaced as {{Presenter_name}}, but when I checked in xml file. It is not coming as expected. PFA.

Can you suggest something over here as without brackets, alteryx is not recognizing the value to be replaced.

Thanks

Paridhi

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

TimPowers — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 18:26:54 GMT

Hi @kelly_gilbert, would you mind discussing what you're using in python for un/zipping?

I haven't been able to successfully install 'zipfile' (as administrator) in the python environment in Alteryx.

Also do you use 'python-pptx' at all? I've managed to successfully install this module, however I can't call it in an import statement - it doesn't respond to calling just 'pptx' and won't accept a hyphon or underscore to prefix it with 'python'.

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

kelly_gilbert — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 19:29:31 GMT

@TimPowers, I do use zipfile to unzip and re-archive the components of the PowerPoint file (from zipfile import ZipFile).

It's part of the Python standard library, so it's interesting that it's not importing properly. My first suggestion was going to be opening Alteryx Designer in administrator mode (but it sounds like you're already doing that). What specific error are you getting when you try to import zipfile?

RE: pptx, I do import and use it (mainly to get the slide count in the presentation). Here's what I use in the Python tool to import and install it:

from ayx import Package Package.installPackages(['python-pptx']) import pptx

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

TimPowers — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 19:41:04 GMT

@kelly_gilbert thanks for responding so quickly - I did realize soon enough that 'zipfile' is standard (I had to reset the tool icon).

And calling 'pptx' did work in the administrator-opened app, but no such luck again after re-opening without those rights (which is unusual whenever I've had to install new modules) - I'll have to figure that out.

Nonetheless, thanks for the discussion thread on this topic - I had learnt to update a .ppt template differently (calling the .xml converted file directly and concatenating the entire file string), however it hasn't been working so I hope accessing the file on a slide-per-slide basis corrects the issue. Thanks!

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

vizay_jadhav — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:25:40 GMT

@kelly_gilbert in our case we followed all steps you mentioned in your article above and we are able to generate Powerpoint deck however the charts are still showing old data and are not getting refreshed with updated embedded Excel file data.

We need to click all the chart one by one and select PowerPoint Edit Data option to refresh the charts. Could you please guide why charts are not getting auto update with latest file.

Re: Using Template PowerPoint file and output PowerPoint depending on different projects

mp123 — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 16:56:35 GMT

Can someone help in converting the updated xml back to pptx format?