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 Node.js via Java provides

The Presentation class, which contains the collections of authors (from the CommentAuthorCollection class). The authors add comments to slides.
The CommentCollection class, which contains the collection of comments for individual authors.
The Comment 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 JavaScript code shows you how to add a comment to a slide in a PowerPoint presentation:

// Instantiates the Presentation class
var pres = new aspose.slides.Presentation();
try {
    // Adds an empty slide
    pres.getSlides().addEmptySlide(pres.getLayoutSlides().get_Item(0));
    // Adds an author
    var author = pres.getCommentAuthors().addAuthor("Jawad", "MF");
    // Sets the position for comments
    var point = java.newInstanceSync("com.aspose.slides.Point2DFloat", java.newFloat(0.2), java.newFloat(0.2));
    // Adds slide comment for an author on slide 1
    author.getComments().addComment("Hello Jawad, this is slide comment", pres.getSlides().get_Item(0), point, java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    // Adds slide comment for an author on slide 2
    author.getComments().addComment("Hello Jawad, this is second slide comment", pres.getSlides().get_Item(1), point, java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    // Accesses ISlide 1
    var slide = pres.getSlides().get_Item(0);
    // When null is passed as an argument, comments from all authors are brought to the selected slide
    var Comments = slide.getSlideComments(author);
    // Accesses the comment at index 0 for slide 1
    var str = Comments[0].getText();
    pres.save("Comments_out.pptx", aspose.slides.SaveFormat.Pptx);
    if (Comments.length > 0) {
        // Selects the Author's comments collection at index 0
        var commentCollection = Comments[0].getAuthor().getComments();
        var Comment = commentCollection.get_Item(0).getText();
    }
} finally {
    if (pres != null) {
        pres.dispose();
    }
}

Access Slide Comments

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

var pres = new aspose.slides.Presentation("Comments1.pptx");
try {
    for (let i = 0; i < pres.getCommentAuthors().size(); i++) {
        let commentAuthor = pres.getCommentAuthors().get_Item(i);
        for (let j = 0; j < commentAuthor.getComments().size(); j++) {
            const comment = commentAuthor.getComments().get_Item(j);
            console.log("ISlide :" + comment.getSlide().getSlideNumber() + " has comment: " + comment.getText() + " with Author: " + comment.getAuthor().getName() + " posted on time :" + comment.getCreatedTime() + "\n");
        }
    }
} finally {
    if (pres != null) {
        pres.dispose();
    }
}

Reply Comments

A parent comment is the top or original comment in a hierarchy of comments or replies. Using the getParentComment or setParentComment methods (from the Comment class), you can set or get a parent comment.

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

var pres = new aspose.slides.Presentation();
try {
    // Adds a comment
    var author1 = pres.getCommentAuthors().addAuthor("Author_1", "A.A.");
    var comment1 = author1.getComments().addComment("comment1", pres.getSlides().get_Item(0), java.newInstanceSync("com.aspose.slides.Point2DFloat", java.newFloat(10), java.newFloat(10)), java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    // Adds a reply to comment1
    var author2 = pres.getCommentAuthors().addAuthor("Autror_2", "B.B.");
    var reply1 = author2.getComments().addComment("reply 1 for comment 1", pres.getSlides().get_Item(0), java.newInstanceSync("com.aspose.slides.Point2DFloat", java.newFloat(10), java.newFloat(10)), java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    reply1.setParentComment(comment1);
    // Adds another reply to comment1
    var reply2 = author2.getComments().addComment("reply 2 for comment 1", pres.getSlides().get_Item(0), java.newInstanceSync("com.aspose.slides.Point2DFloat", java.newFloat(10), java.newFloat(10)), java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    reply2.setParentComment(comment1);
    // Add a reply to an existing reply
    var subReply = author1.getComments().addComment("subreply 3 for reply 2", pres.getSlides().get_Item(0), java.newInstanceSync("com.aspose.slides.Point2DFloat", java.newFloat(10), java.newFloat(10)), java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    subReply.setParentComment(reply2);
    var comment2 = author2.getComments().addComment("comment 2", pres.getSlides().get_Item(0), java.newInstanceSync("com.aspose.slides.Point2DFloat", java.newFloat(10), java.newFloat(10)), java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    var comment3 = author2.getComments().addComment("comment 3", pres.getSlides().get_Item(0), java.newInstanceSync("com.aspose.slides.Point2DFloat", java.newFloat(10), java.newFloat(10)), java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    var reply3 = author1.getComments().addComment("reply 4 for comment 3", pres.getSlides().get_Item(0), java.newInstanceSync("com.aspose.slides.Point2DFloat", java.newFloat(10), java.newFloat(10)), java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    reply3.setParentComment(comment3);
    // Displays the comments hierarchy on console
    var slide = pres.getSlides().get_Item(0);
    var comments = slide.getSlideComments(null);
    for (var i = 0; i < comments.length; i++) {
        var comment = comments[i];
        while (comment.getParentComment() != null) {
            console.log("\t");
            comment = comment.getParentComment();
        }
        console.log((comments[i].getAuthor().getName() + " : ") + comments[i].getText());
        console.log();
    }
    pres.save("parent_comment.pptx", aspose.slides.SaveFormat.Pptx);
    // Removes comment1 and all replies to it
    comment1.remove();
    pres.save("remove_comment.pptx", aspose.slides.SaveFormat.Pptx);
} finally {
    if (pres != null) {
        pres.dispose();
    }
}

Attention

When the Remove method (from the Comment class) is used to delete a comment, the replies to the comment also get deleted.
If the setParentComment 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 Node.js via Java 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 JavaScript code shows you how to add a modern comment to a slide in a PowerPoint presentation:

var pres = new aspose.slides.Presentation();
try {
    var newAuthor = pres.getCommentAuthors().addAuthor("Some Author", "SA");
    var modernComment = newAuthor.getComments().addModernComment("This is a modern comment", pres.getSlides().get_Item(0), null, java.newInstanceSync("com.aspose.slides.Point2DFloat", java.newFloat(100), java.newFloat(100)), java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    pres.save("pres.pptx", aspose.slides.SaveFormat.Pptx);
} finally {
    if (pres != null) {
        pres.dispose();
    }
}

Remove Comment

Delete All Comments and Authors

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

var presentation = new aspose.slides.Presentation("example.pptx");
try {
    // Deletes all comments from the presentation
    for (let i = 0; i < presentation.getCommentAuthors().size(); i++) {
    var author = presentation.getCommentAuthors().get_Item(i)
        author.getComments().clear();
    }
    // Deletes all authors
    presentation.getCommentAuthors().clear();
    presentation.save("example_out.pptx", aspose.slides.SaveFormat.Pptx);
} finally {
    if (presentation != null) {
        presentation.dispose();
    }
}

Delete Specific Comments

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

var presentation = new aspose.slides.Presentation();
try {
    var slide = presentation.getSlides().get_Item(0);
    // add comments...
    var author = presentation.getCommentAuthors().addAuthor("Author", "A");
    author.getComments().addComment("comment 1", slide, java.newInstanceSync("com.aspose.slides.Point2DFloat",  java.newFloat(0.2), java.newFloat(0.2)), java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    author.getComments().addComment("comment 2", slide, java.newInstanceSync("com.aspose.slides.Point2DFloat",  java.newFloat(0.3), java.newFloat(0.2)), java.newInstanceSync("java.util.Date"));
    // remove all comments that contain "comment 1" text
    
    
    for (var i = 0; i < presentation.getCommentAuthors().length; i++) {
        var commentAuthor = presentation.getCommentAuthors().get_Item(i);
        var toRemove = java.newInstanceSync("java.util.ArrayList");
        for (let j = 0; j < slide.getSlideComments(commentAuthor).size(); j++) {
            let comment = slide.getSlideComments(commentAuthor).get_Item(j);
            if (comment.getText() === "comment 1") {
                toRemove.add(comment);
            }
        }
        for (var i = 0; i < toRemove.length; i++) {
            var comment = toRemove.get_Item(i);
            commentAuthor.getComments().remove(comment);
        }
    }
    presentation.save("pres.pptx", aspose.slides.SaveFormat.Pptx);
} finally {
    if (presentation != null) {
        presentation.dispose();
    }
}

Presentation View Properties Presentation Notes