PowerPoint workflows

Keep decks and rendered previews under /home/qubicl. Obtain this skill's resourceRoot from skill_view and run bundled helpers with /opt/qubicl/skills-venv/bin/python. Qubicl computer and workstation images contain the pinned PPTX library; do not install dependencies during a task.

Useful helpers beneath <resourceRoot>/scripts/:

• pptx_read.py FILE --outline|--notes|--images DIR
• pptx_create.py SPEC.json OUTPUT.pptx
• pptx_edit.py FILE for text, charts, images, slide order, backgrounds, links, footers, and notes
• pptx_from_template.py TEMPLATE.pptx OUTPUT.pptx --values VALUES.json
• pptx_render.py FILE --outdir DIR

Inspect the source deck before editing. Prefer a new output for structural changes. Validate by reading the resulting outline and notes. On workstation computers, render slides through LibreOffice and Poppler for visual QA; on computer computers, structured operations remain available but rendering may be unavailable. Check representative first, middle, and last slides rather than assuming a successful save preserved layout.

Use the common rendering receipt for PDF, DOCX, XLSX and PPTX: /opt/qubicl/skills-venv/bin/python /opt/qubicl/artifact-render.py FILE --outdir DIR. Each invocation captures its source, uses an isolated Office profile, and writes a unique run directory with PDF, exact numbered PNGs and manifest.json. Read sourceSha256, pages, warnings and validation, then inspect the generated pages. Old previews are never returned as this run's outputs. visuallyInspected: false is intentional: the tool renders; the agent performs visual review. Office rendering needs workstation.

Outlines include all slides, with show, hidden, zero-based index, one-based slide_number, stable slide_id and visible/hidden counts. The renderer explicitly exports visible slides only; hidden content remains in the source and outline. Its presentation inventory records each slide's renderedPage (null for hidden slides), and each page has sourceSlide identity/order. Do not equate output page numbers with source slide numbers. An all-hidden deck returns rendered: false, reason: no_visible_slides and a manifest with the complete source inventory.

Replacement visits grouped shapes and all original matches across runs, preserving unaffected formatting. Slide duplication copies chart XML, embedded workbooks, styles/colors, notes and media into independent parts, including nested grouped charts. Editing the duplicate leaves the source data and styles unchanged. Layout/master definitions and links to other slides remain shared presentation references; self-links target the duplicate. The chart-data command indexes charts recursively through groups. Explicit replacement of a linked chart's data creates a private embedded workbook without accessing its external source. Footer placeholders receive unique shape IDs.

Slide deletion removes incoming click/hover actions, custom-show references and section membership for that slide. Its unreachable notes, charts, embedded workbooks and media are omitted from the saved package; resources still used by surviving slides remain. removed_slide_links reports cleared incoming actions and custom-show entries. Text on surviving link shapes is retained.

Chart outlines retain type, categories and flattened series values, and add plots with each plot's index, type, kind, categories and series. Scatter series include xValues and yValues; bubble series also include bubbleSizes. Sparse points retain their positions. Missing caches are read from the embedded workbook, including series names and date-valued coordinates, without fetching external links.

Use "plot": N in a chart-data specification to edit a combined chart's plot (default 0). Category specifications keep their existing categories and series mapping. For scatter or bubble replacement use {"series": [{"name": "S", "xValues": [1, 2], "yValues": [3, 4], "bubbleSizes": [5, 6]}]}; omit bubbleSizes for scatter. update_series may change xValues, yValues (or its compatible alias values) and bubbleSizes independently; omitted coordinates and sizes remain intact. Combined-plot edits preserve other plots and existing embedded worksheet formulas. An emptied plot can be populated again.