Is there a function to scrape the notes sections of Powerpoint Slides?

Question

I am attempting to read through ~ 100 powerpoint slides and read the notes sections of each slide. I will do some text wrangling and write to csv after the fact, but need to get the notes in a workable format first.

I am working with the officer package, read_pptx function right now, but am open to whatever packages needed. It doesn't seem to pull in notes, but I may just be looking at this wrong.

To show a bit of what I've tried -->

library(officer)

ppt_var <- read_pptx('test_presentation.pptx')
view(ppt_var)

Ideally, I could get the text of each notes slide added to individual variables to write to a csv. I am confident that I can handle the manipulation once I get the notes read in, but cannot seem to get that part down.

Thank you for any pointers or support!

You can always read them from the `xml` file. I don't know of a package that will do it for you. — M--, Apr 29 '19 at 14:59
All office files are zipped XML. Unzip it, read the xml, you should be able to find the notes. — Gregor Thomas, Apr 29 '19 at 15:00
Other option would be writing a VB Script and run that from R. Look here for the vbs tip. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/powerpoint.slide.notespage — M--, Apr 29 '19 at 15:02
or `C#`: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2164819/how-to-programmatically-read-and-change-slide-notes-in-powerpoint — M--, Apr 29 '19 at 15:09
This question is specifically about the officer package so I have voted to reopen it. — G. Grothendieck, Apr 29 '19 at 22:15

G. Grothendieck · Answer 1 · 2019-04-30T13:41:59.610

2

How do do that is shown in the code here: https://github.com/davidgohel/officer/issues/117 .

The following is based on that code:

library(magrittr)
library(officer)
library(xml2)

p <- read_pptx("mypresentation.pptx")
notes_dir <- file.path(p$package_dir, "ppt", "notesSlides")
files <- list.files(pattern = ".xml$", path = notes_dir, full.names = TRUE)

Notes <- lapply(files,
 . %>% 
   read_xml %>%
   xml_find_all("//a:t") %>%
   xml_text
)

edited Apr 30 '19 at 13:41

answered Apr 29 '19 at 15:38

G. Grothendieck

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That solution worked well for my purposes, thank you so much for posting! I appreciate the thorough response. – iceicelogan Apr 30 '19 at 14:27

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 17 '22 at 01:57

Assuming you are using the Document.OpenXML dependencies in C#, a more native way would be:

    public static SlidePart GetSlidePart(PresentationDocument pptxDoc, int index)
    {
        // Get the relationship ID of the first slide.
        PresentationPart presentationPart = pptxDoc.PresentationPart;
        OpenXmlElementList slideIds = presentationPart.Presentation.SlideIdList.ChildElements;
        string relId = (slideIds[index] as SlideId).RelationshipId;

        // Get the slide part from the relationship ID.
        return (SlidePart)presentationPart.GetPartById(relId);
    }

    public static string GetNoteText(PresentationDocument pptxDoc, int index)
    {
        //Get the Slide Part
        SlidePart slidePart = GetSlidePart(pptxDoc, index);
        //Extract the Note text
        return slidePart.NotesSlidePart.NotesSlide.InnerText.ToString();
    }

Is there a function to scrape the notes sections of Powerpoint Slides?

2 Answers2