Presentation Comments

In PowerPoint, a comment appears as a note or annotation on a slide. When a comment is clicked, its contents or messages are revealed.

Why Add Comments to Presentations?

You may want to use comments to provide feedback or communicate with your colleagues when you review presentations.

To allow you to use comments in PowerPoint presentations, Aspose.Slides for C++ provides

The Presentation class, which contains the collections of authors (from the get_CommentAuthors() method). The authors add comments to slides.
The ICommentCollection interface, which contains the collection of comments for individual authors.
The IComment class, which contains information on authors and their comments: who added the comment, the time the comment was added, the comment’s position, etc.
The CommentAuthor class, which contains information on individual authors: the author’s name, his initials, comments associated with the author’s name, etc.

Add Slide Comment

This C++ code shows you how to add a comment to a slide in a PowerPoint presentation:

// Instantiates the Presentation class
auto presentation = System::MakeObject<Presentation>();
// Adds an empty slide
presentation->get_Slides()->AddEmptySlide(presentation->get_LayoutSlides()->idx_get(0));

// Adds an author
auto author = presentation->get_CommentAuthors()->AddAuthor(u"Jawad", u"MF");

// Sets the position for comments
PointF point;
point.set_X(0.2f);
point.set_Y(0.2f);

// Accesses ISlide 1
auto slide1 = presentation->get_Slides()->idx_get(0);
// Accesses ISlide 2
auto slide2 = presentation->get_Slides()->idx_get(1);

// Adds slide comment for an author on slide 1
author->get_Comments()->AddComment(u"Hello Jawad, this is slide comment", slide1, point, DateTime::get_Now());

// Adds slide comment for an author on slide 2
author->get_Comments()->AddComment(u"Hello Jawad, this is second slide comment", slide2, point, DateTime::get_Now());

// When null is passed as an argument, comments from all authors are brought to the selected slide
auto comments = slide1->GetSlideComments(author);

// Accesses the comment at index 0 for slide 1
String str = comments[0]->get_Text();

presentation->Save(u"Comments_out.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);

if (comments->GetLength(0) > 0)
{
    // Selects the Author's comments collection at index 0
    auto commentCollection = comments[0]->get_Author()->get_Comments();
    String Comment = commentCollection->idx_get(0)->get_Text();
}

Access Slide Comments

This C++ code shows you how to access an existing comment on a slide in a PowerPoint presentation:

// Instantiates the Presentation class
auto presentation = System::MakeObject<Presentation>(u"Comments1.pptx");

for (auto&& commentAuthor : presentation->get_CommentAuthors())
{
    auto author = System::ExplicitCast<CommentAuthor>(commentAuthor);
    for (auto&& comment1 : System::IterateOver(author->get_Comments()))
    {
        SmartPtr<Comment> comment = System::ExplicitCast<Comment>(comment1);
        Console::WriteLine(String(u"ISlide :")
                        + comment->get_Slide()->get_SlideNumber()
                        + u" has comment: " + comment->get_Text()
                        + u" with Author: " + comment->get_Author()->get_Name()
                        + u" posted on time :" + comment->get_CreatedTime() + u"\n");
    }
}

Reply Comments

A parent comment is the top or original comment in a hierarchy of comments or replies. Using the ParentComment property (from the IComment interface), you can set or get a parent comment.

This C++ code shows you how to add comments and get replies to them:

auto pres = System::MakeObject<Presentation>();

// Accesses ISlide 1
auto slide1 = pres->get_Slides()->idx_get(0);

// Adds a comment
auto author1 = pres->get_CommentAuthors()->AddAuthor(u"Author_1", u"A.A.");
auto comment1 = author1->get_Comments()->AddComment(u"comment1", slide1, PointF(10.0f, 10.0f), DateTime::get_Now());

// Adds a reply to comment1
auto author2 = pres->get_CommentAuthors()->AddAuthor(u"Autror_2", u"B.B.");
auto reply1 = author2->get_Comments()->AddComment(u"reply 1 for comment 1", slide1, PointF(10.0f, 10.0f), DateTime::get_Now());
reply1->set_ParentComment(comment1);

// Adds another reply to comment1
auto reply2 = author2->get_Comments()->AddComment(u"reply 2 for comment 1", slide1, PointF(10.0f, 10.0f), DateTime::get_Now());
reply2->set_ParentComment(comment1);

// Adds a reply to existing reply
auto subReply = author1->get_Comments()->AddComment(u"subreply 3 for reply 2", slide1, PointF(10.0f, 10.0f), DateTime::get_Now());
subReply->set_ParentComment(reply2);

auto comment2 = author2->get_Comments()->AddComment(u"comment 2", slide1, PointF(10.0f, 10.0f), DateTime::get_Now());
auto comment3 = author2->get_Comments()->AddComment(u"comment 3", slide1, PointF(10.0f, 10.0f), DateTime::get_Now());

auto reply3 = author1->get_Comments()->AddComment(u"reply 4 for comment 3", slide1, PointF(10.0f, 10.0f), DateTime::get_Now());
reply3->set_ParentComment(comment3);

// Displays the comments hierarchy on console
auto comments = slide1->GetSlideComments(nullptr);
for (int32_t i = 0; i < comments->get_Length(); i++)
{
    auto comment = comments[i];
    while (comment->get_ParentComment() != nullptr)
    {
        Console::Write(u"\t");
        comment = comment->get_ParentComment();
    }

    Console::Write(u"{0} : {1}", comments[i]->get_Author()->get_Name(), comments[i]->get_Text());
    Console::WriteLine();
}

pres->Save(u"parent_comment.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);

// Removes comment1 and all replies to it
comment1->Remove();

pres->Save(u"remove_comment.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);

Attention

When the Remove method (from the IComment interface) is used to delete a comment, the replies to the comment also get deleted.
If the ParentComment setting results in a circular reference, PptxEditException will be thrown.

Add Modern Comment

In 2021, Microsoft introduced modern comments in PowerPoint. The modern comments feature significantly improves collaboration in PowerPoint. Through modern comments, PowerPoint users get to resolve comments, anchor comments to objects and texts, and engage in interactions a lot more easily than before.

In Aspose Slides for C++ 21.11, we implemented support for modern comments by adding the ModernComment class. The AddModernComment and InsertModernComment methods were added to the CommentCollection class.

This C++ code shows you how to add a modern comment to a slide in a PowerPoint presentation:

auto pres = System::MakeObject<Presentation>();
// Accesses ISlide 1
auto slide1 = pres->get_Slides()->idx_get(0);

auto newAuthor = pres->get_CommentAuthors()->AddAuthor(u"Some Author", u"SA");
auto modernComment = newAuthor->get_Comments()->AddModernComment(u"This is a modern comment", slide1, nullptr, PointF(100.0f, 100.0f), DateTime::get_Now());

pres->Save(u"pres.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);

Remove Comment

Delete All Comments and Authors

This C++ code shows you how to remove all comments and authors in a presentation:

using namespace Aspose::Slides;
using namespace Aspose::Slides::Export;
using namespace System::Drawing;

auto presentation = System::MakeObject<Presentation>(u"example.pptx");

// Deletes all comments from the presentation
for (auto author : presentation->get_CommentAuthors())
{
    author->get_Comments()->Clear();
}
        
// Deletes all authors
presentation->get_CommentAuthors()->Clear();
presentation->Save(u"example_out.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);

Delete Specific Comments

This C++ code shows you how to delete specific comments on a slide:

using namespace Aspose::Slides;
using namespace Aspose::Slides::Export;
using namespace System::Drawing;

auto presentation = System::MakeObject<Presentation>();
auto slide = presentation->get_Slides()->idx_get(0);
        
// add comments...
auto author = presentation->get_CommentAuthors()->AddAuthor(u"Author", u"A");
author->get_Comments()->AddComment(u"comment 1", slide, PointF(0.2f, 0.2f), System::DateTime::get_Now());
author->get_Comments()->AddComment(u"comment 2", slide, PointF(0.3f, 0.2f), System::DateTime::get_Now());
        
// remove all comments that contain "comment 1" text
for (auto commentAuthor : presentation->get_CommentAuthors())
{
    auto toRemove = System::MakeObject<System::Collections::Generic::List<System::SharedPtr<IComment>>>();
    for (auto comment : slide->GetSlideComments(commentAuthor))
    {
        if (comment->get_Text() == u"comment 1")
        {
            toRemove->Add(comment);
        }
    }
    for (auto comment : toRemove)
    {
        commentAuthor->get_Comments()->Remove(comment);
    }
}
        
presentation->Save(u"pres.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);

Presentation View Properties Presentation Notes