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Is there any way to control text direction in python-pptx?

What I want to do is make text in shapes vertical as shown in the image below.

I have searched the documentation for hints but found nothing.

enter image description here

One simple solution seems to be to make a horizontal textbox and rotate it 90 degrees:

my_shape.rotation = 90

This makes the entire shape vertical, but what I want to do is change the direction of the text within the shape (i.e. make a vertical text box).

For half-width characters, its behavior looks just the same as the vertical textbox. However, for full-width characters like Japanese ones, the solution above changes the orientation of each character and this is what I don't expect(shown in the right side of the image).

What I want is shown in the left side of the image. Note that the direction of the Japanese sentence is vertical, but the orientation of the characters in it is still kept.

enter image description here

This can be achieved easily by PowerPoint. You can insert a vertical textbox as shown in the image below. (Make sure that the horizontal textbox & the vertical textbox are distinguished in the PowerPoint UI.) enter image description here

I want to do the same thing by python-pptx.

all_aest
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  • Please also add the sample code where you are trying this. – AKS Jul 06 '21 at 12:43
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    You could manipulate string to have `'\n'.join('Hello World')` – Vishnudev Krishnadas Jul 06 '21 at 12:48
  • @AKS The slide in the image is made with the ordinary PowerPoint UI, not python-pptx. I have added the explanation about how I inserted the vertical text box. – all_aest Jul 06 '21 at 13:23
  • @all_aest the reason I was asking for the sample code is to determine if you have a starting point say a text frame where you are adding normal text (without any rotation) and then we can move forward from there. Anyhow, please check my answer. It is written based on the assumption that you have knowledge of adding a simple textbox using `python-pptx` library. – AKS Jul 06 '21 at 13:30

1 Answers1

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python-pptx package doesn't expose a ready-to-set attribute for this. At the end, it generates an XML and if you know what you need to touch, you can edit the XML directly to achieve the end result. You can also unzip the excel file, check the output xml to know what needs to be changed.

Many formatting style like anchroing of text, autofitting, and aligning of the text is done on the <a:bodypr> tag. It is defined in the CT_TextBodyProperties. The text direction is controlled by vert attribute and that also have some valid values which are defined in ST_TextVerticalType.

Assuming that you have the text frame where you want to add the text:

text_frame.text = '<your text>'

You can follow the hierarchy, get the elements and update the attributes. Text frame will have txBody which will further have bodyPr. But it also has a property to directly access the bodyPr.

text_frame._bodyPr.attrib.update({'vert': 'vert'})

Here we add vert attribute with a value vert which would rotate only text and not the actual shape. You can also experiment with other values defined in ST_TextVerticalType.

AKS
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    Thank you for your great answer! Adding `vert` attribute with a value `mongolianVert` brought the very result that I have wanted! – all_aest Jul 06 '21 at 13:39