PowerPoint Creation and Editing: Setup, Usage & Best Practices

What This Skill Does

Create, read, edit, and analyze PowerPoint .pptx files. Supports creating from scratch with pptxgenjs, editing existing presentations, and extracting content. Emphasizes visual quality assurance with rendering workflows.

Getting Started

Reading:

python -m markitdown presentation.pptx    # Text extraction
python scripts/thumbnail.py presentation.pptx  # Visual overview

Creating:

npm install -g pptxgenjs

Editing:

python scripts/office/unpack.py presentation.pptx unpacked/
# Edit XML
python scripts/office/pack.py unpacked/ output.pptx

Key Features

Design Guidelines

Never create boring slides. Use:

• Bold, content-informed color palettes


• Visual dominance (60-70% one color, accent sparingly)


• Dark/light contrast (dark titles, light content)


• Distinctive visual motifs


• Interesting typography pairings

Avoid "AI slop":

• No excessive centering


• No purple gradients everywhere


• No uniform rounded corners


• No default Arial/Times


• No accent lines under titles

Quality Assurance

Required QA:

Convert to images

Use subagent for fresh-eye review

Check for overlaps, cutoffs, spacing issues

Fix and re-verify

Repeat until zero issues

Never declare success without full fix-verify cycle.

Usage Examples

Creating Presentation

const { Document, Packer, Slide } = require('pptxgenjs');

const pres = new PptxGenJS();
const slide = pres.addSlide();

slide.addText("Executive Summary", {
  x: 0.5, y: 0.5, fontSize: 36, bold: true, color: "1E2761"
});

pres.writeFile("deck.pptx");

Visual QA

# Convert to images
python scripts/office/soffice.py --headless --convert-to pdf deck.pptx
pdftoppm -jpeg -r 150 deck.pdf slide

# Inspect slide-01.jpg, slide-02.jpg, etc. with subagent

Best Practices

1. Use Subagents for QA

Even for 2-3 slides - fresh eyes find issues you'll miss.

2. Pick Bold Colors

Choose colors that match your topic. Don't default to generic blue.

3. Vary Layouts

Don't repeat same layout. Mix columns, cards, callouts.

4. Add Visual Elements

Every slide needs images, icons, charts, or shapes. No text-only.

5. Validate Content

Check for leftover placeholder text:

python -m markitdown output.pptx | grep -iE "xxxx|lorem|ipsum"

6. Test Sample Refs First

Verify 2-3 refs pull correct values before building full model.

When to Use

Use when:

• Creating slide decks


• Editing presentations


• Extracting content from .pptx


• Converting legacy .ppt files


• Need professional visual formatting

Don't use when:

• Simple image creation needed


• Working with PDFs


• Spreadsheets required

Related Skills

• Theme Factory Skill - For consistent theming
• DOC Skill - For Word documents

Source

Organization: OpenAI
Skill Name: pptx
Description: Use any time a .pptx file is involved - creating, reading, editing, or analyzing presentations.