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 PHP via Java provides

The Presentation class, which contains the collections of authors (from the ICommentAuthorCollection interface). 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 PHP code shows you how to add a comment to a slide in a PowerPoint presentation:

  # Instantiates the Presentation class
  $pres = new Presentation();
  $Array = new java_class("java.lang.reflect.Array");
  try {
    # Adds an empty slide
    $pres->getSlides()->addEmptySlide($pres->getLayoutSlides()->get_Item(0));
    # Adds an author
    $author = $pres->getCommentAuthors()->addAuthor("Jawad", "MF");
    # Sets the position for comments
    $point = new Point2DFloat(0.2, 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, new Java("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, new Java("java.util.Date"));
    # Accesses ISlide 1
    $slide = $pres->getSlides()->get_Item(0);
    # When null is passed as an argument, comments from all authors are brought to the selected slide
    $Comments = $slide->getSlideComments($author);
    # Accesses the comment at index 0 for slide 1
    $str = $Comments[0]->getText();
    $pres->save("Comments_out.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);
    if (java_values($Array->getLength($Comments)) > 0) {
      # Selects the Author's comments collection at index 0
      $commentCollection = $Comments[0]->getAuthor()->getComments();
      $Comment = $commentCollection->get_Item(0)->getText();
    }
  } finally {
    if (!java_is_null($pres)) {
      $pres->dispose();
    }
  }

Access Slide Comments

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

  # Instantiates the Presentation class
  $pres = new Presentation("Comments1.pptx");
  try {
    foreach($pres->getCommentAuthors() as $commentAuthor) {
      $author = $commentAuthor;
      foreach($author->getComments() as $comment1) {
        $comment = $comment1;
        echo("ISlide :" . $comment->getSlide()->getSlideNumber() . " has comment: " . $comment->getText() . " with Author: " . $comment->getAuthor()->getName() . " posted on time :" . $comment->getCreatedTime() . "\n");
      }
    }
  } finally {
    if (!java_is_null($pres)) {
      $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 IComment interface), you can set or get a parent comment.

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

  $pres = new Presentation();
  $Array = new java_class("java.lang.reflect.Array");
  try {
    # Adds a comment
    $author1 = $pres->getCommentAuthors()->addAuthor("Author_1", "A.A.");
    $comment1 = $author1->getComments()->addComment("comment1", $pres->getSlides()->get_Item(0), new Point2DFloat(10, 10), new Java("java.util.Date"));
    # Adds a reply to comment1
    $author2 = $pres->getCommentAuthors()->addAuthor("Autror_2", "B.B.");
    $reply1 = $author2->getComments()->addComment("reply 1 for comment 1", $pres->getSlides()->get_Item(0), new Point2DFloat(10, 10), new Java("java.util.Date"));
    $reply1->setParentComment($comment1);
    # Adds another reply to comment1
    $reply2 = $author2->getComments()->addComment("reply 2 for comment 1", $pres->getSlides()->get_Item(0), new Point2DFloat(10, 10), new Java("java.util.Date"));
    $reply2->setParentComment($comment1);
    # Add a reply to an existing reply
    $subReply = $author1->getComments()->addComment("subreply 3 for reply 2", $pres->getSlides()->get_Item(0), new Point2DFloat(10, 10), new Java("java.util.Date"));
    $subReply->setParentComment($reply2);
    $comment2 = $author2->getComments()->addComment("comment 2", $pres->getSlides()->get_Item(0), new Point2DFloat(10, 10), new Java("java.util.Date"));
    $comment3 = $author2->getComments()->addComment("comment 3", $pres->getSlides()->get_Item(0), new Point2DFloat(10, 10), new Java("java.util.Date"));
    $reply3 = $author1->getComments()->addComment("reply 4 for comment 3", $pres->getSlides()->get_Item(0), new Point2DFloat(10, 10), new Java("java.util.Date"));
    $reply3->setParentComment($comment3);
    # Displays the comments hierarchy on console
    $slide = $pres->getSlides()->get_Item(0);
    $comments = $slide->getSlideComments(null);
    for($i = 0; $i < java_values($Array->getLength($comments)) ; $i++) {
      $comment = $comments[$i];
      while (!java_is_null($comment->getParentComment())) {
        System->out->print("\t");
        $comment = $comment->getParentComment();
      } 
      echo($comments[$i]->getAuthor()->getName() . " : " . $comments[$i]->getText());
      echo();
    }
    $pres->save("parent_comment.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);
    # Removes comment1 and all replies to it
    $comment1->remove();
    $pres->save("remove_comment.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);
  } finally {
    if (!java_is_null($pres)) {
      $pres->dispose();
    }
  }

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 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 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 PHP code shows you how to add a modern comment to a slide in a PowerPoint presentation:

  $pres = new Presentation();
  try {
    $newAuthor = $pres->getCommentAuthors()->addAuthor("Some Author", "SA");
    $modernComment = $newAuthor->getComments()->addModernComment("This is a modern comment", $pres->getSlides()->get_Item(0), null, new Point2DFloat(100, 100), new Java("java.util.Date"));
    $pres->save("pres.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);
  } finally {
    if (!java_is_null($pres)) {
      $pres->dispose();
    }
  }

Remove Comment

Delete All Comments and Authors

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

  $presentation = new Presentation("example.pptx");
  try {
    # Deletes all comments from the presentation
    foreach($presentation->getCommentAuthors() as $author) {
      $author->getComments()->clear();
    }
    # Deletes all authors
    $presentation->getCommentAuthors()->clear();
    $presentation->save("example_out.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);
  } finally {
    if (!java_is_null($presentation)) {
      $presentation->dispose();
    }
  }

Delete Specific Comments

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

  $presentation = new Presentation();
  try {
    $slide = $presentation->getSlides()->get_Item(0);
    # add comments...
    $author = $presentation->getCommentAuthors()->addAuthor("Author", "A");
    $author->getComments()->addComment("comment 1", $slide, new Point2DFloat(0.2, 0.2), new Java("java.util.Date"));
    $author->getComments()->addComment("comment 2", $slide, new Point2DFloat(0.3, 0.2), new Java("java.util.Date"));
    # remove all comments that contain "comment 1" text
    foreach($presentation->getCommentAuthors() as $commentAuthor) {
      $toRemove = new Java("java.util.ArrayList");
      foreach($slide->getSlideComments($commentAuthor) as $comment) {
        if ($comment->getText()->equals("comment 1")) {
          $toRemove->add($comment);
        }
      }
      foreach($toRemove as $comment) {
        $commentAuthor->getComments()->remove($comment);
      }
    }
    $presentation->save("pres.pptx", SaveFormat::Pptx);
  } finally {
    if (!java_is_null($presentation)) {
      $presentation->dispose();
    }
  }

Presentation Properties Presentation Notes