Add Slides to Presentations with Python

Overview

Before adding slides to a presentation, it helps to understand how PowerPoint organizes them. Each presentation contains a master slide, optional layout slides, and one or more normal slides. Every slide has a unique ID, and normal slides are ordered by a zero-based index. This article shows how to use Aspose.Slides for Python to create slides and choose appropriate layouts.

Add Slides to Presentations

Aspose.Slides allows you to append new slides based on existing layout slides. The example below iterates through each layout in the presentation, adds a slide that uses that layout, and then saves the file.

1. Create an instance of the Presentation class.
2. Access the SlideCollection.
3. For each item in presentation.layout_slides, call add_empty_slide to append a slide that uses that layout.
4. Optionally modify the newly added slides.
5. Save the presentation as a PPTX file.

import aspose.slides as slides

# Instantiate the Presentation class.
with slides.Presentation() as presentation:
    # Access the slide collection.
    slides = presentation.slides

    for layout_slide in presentation.layout_slides:
        # Add an empty slide to the slide collection.
        slides.add_empty_slide(layout_slide)

    # Do some work on the newly added slides.

    # Save the presentation to disk.
    presentation.save("empty_slides.pptx", slides.export.SaveFormat.PPTX)

FAQ

Can I insert a new slide at a specific position, not just at the end?

Yes. The library supports slide collections and insert/clone operations, so you can add a slide at the required index rather than only at the end.

Are the theme/styles preserved when adding a slide based on a layout?

Yes. A layout inherits formatting from its master, and the new slide inherits from the selected layout and its associated master.

Which slide is present in a new “empty” presentation before adding slides?

A newly created presentation already contains one blank slide with index zero. This is important to consider when calculating insertion indices.

How do I choose the “right” layout for a new slide if the master has many options?

Generally choose the LayoutSlide that matches the required structure (Title and Content, Two Content, etc.). If such a layout is missing, you can add it to the master and then use it.