Merge Presentation

Presentation Merging

When you merge one presentation to another, you are effectively combining their slides in a single presentation to obtain one file.

What Can Be Merged

With Aspose.Slides, you can merge

  • entire presentations. All the slides from the presentations end up in one presentation
  • specific slides. Selected slides end up in one presentation
  • presentations in one format (PPT to PPT, PPTX to PPTX, etc) and in different formats (PPT to PPTX, PPTX to ODP, etc) to one another.

Merging Options

You can apply options that determine whether

  • each slide in the output presentation retains a unique style
  • a specific style is used for all the slides in the output presentation.

To merge presentations, Aspose.Slides provides add_clone methods (from the ISlideCollection interface). There are several implementations of the add_clone methods that define the presentation merging process parameters. Every Presentation object has a slides collection, so you can call a add_clone method from the presentation to which you want to merge slides.

The add_clone method returns an ISlide object, which is a clone of the source slide. The slides in an output presentation are simply a copy of the slides from the source. Therefore, you can make changes the resulting slides (for example, apply styles or formatting options or layouts) without worrying about the source presentations becoming affected.

Merge Presentations

Aspose.Slides provides the AddClone (ISlide) method that allows you to combine slides while the slides retain their layouts and styles (default parameters).

This Python code shows you how to merge presentations:

import aspose.slides as slides

with slides.Presentation("pres.pptx") as pres1:
    with slides.Presentation("Presentation1.pptx") as pres2:
        for slide in pres2.slides:
            pres1.slides.add_clone(slide)
        pres1.save("combined.pptx", slides.export.SaveFormat.PPTX)

Merge Presentations with Slide Master

Aspose.Slides provides the add_clone (ISlide, IMasterSlide, Boolean) method that allows you to combine slides while applying a slide master presentation template. This way, if necessary, you get to change the style for slides in the output presentation.

This code in Python demonstrates the described operation:

import aspose.slides as slides

with slides.Presentation("pres.pptx") as pres1:
    with slides.Presentation("Presentation1.pptx") as pres2:
        for slide in pres2.slides:
            pres1.slides.add_clone(slide, pres1.masters[0], allow_clone_missing_layout = True)
        pres1.save("combined_with_master.pptx", slides.export.SaveFormat.PPTX)

If you want the slides in the output presentation to have a different slide layout, use the add_clone (ISlide, ILayoutSlide) method instead when merging.

Merge Specific Slides From Presentations

Merging specific slides from multiple presentations is useful for creating custom slide decks. Aspose.Slides for Python via .NET allows you to select and import only the slides you need. The API preserves formatting, layout, and design of the original slides.

The following Python code creates a new presentation, adds title slides from two other presentations, and saves the result to a file:

def get_title_slide(pres):
    for slide in pres.slides:
        if slide.layout_slide.layout_type == slides.SlideLayoutType.TITLE:
            return slide
    return None


with slides.Presentation() as presentation, \
        slides.Presentation("presentation1.pptx") as presentation1, \
        slides.Presentation("presentation2.pptx") as presentation2:
    presentation.slides.remove_at(0)

    slide1 = get_title_slide(presentation1)
    if slide1 is not None:
        presentation.slides.add_clone(slide1)

    slide2 = get_title_slide(presentation2)
    if slide2 is not None:
        presentation.slides.add_clone(slide2)

    presentation.save("combined.pptx", slides.export.SaveFormat.PPTX)

Merge Presentations With Slide Layout

This Python code shows you how to combine slides from presentations while applying your preferred slide layout to them to get one output presentation:

import aspose.slides as slides

with slides.Presentation("pres.pptx") as pres1:
    with slides.Presentation("Presentation1.pptx") as pres2:
        for slide in pres2.slides:
            pres1.slides.add_clone(slide, pres1.layout_slides[0])
        pres1.save("combined_with_layout.pptx", slides.export.SaveFormat.PPTX)

Merge Presentations With Different Slide Sizes

To merge 2 presentations with different slide sizes, you have to resize one of the presentations to make its size match that of the other presentation.

This sample code demonstrates the described operation:

import aspose.slides as slides

with slides.Presentation("pres.pptx") as pres1:
    with slides.Presentation("Presentation1.pptx") as pres2:
        pres2.slide_size.set_size(pres1.slide_size.size.width, pres1.slide_size.size.height, slides.SlideSizeScaleType.ENSURE_FIT)
        for slide in pres2.slides:
            pres1.slides.add_clone(slide)
        pres1.save("combined_size.pptx", slides.export.SaveFormat.PPTX)

Merge Slides to Presentation Section

This Python code shows you how to merge a specific slide to a section in a presentation:

import aspose.slides as slides

with slides.Presentation("pres.pptx") as pres1:
    with slides.Presentation("Presentation1.pptx") as pres2:
        for slide in pres2.slides:
            pres1.slides.add_clone(slide, pres1.sections[0])
        pres1.save("combined_sections.pptx", slides.export.SaveFormat.PPTX)

The slide is added at the end of the section.

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