How to Extract Slide Notes Keeping Content Formatting?

Aspose.Slides Cloud Product Family
1

I’ve went all over the documentation and couldn’t really find an answer for this - does aspose.slides include any way to extract only the speaker notes from a slide? Preferably as HTML or some other output that can keep any formatting intact (bullet points, numbered lists, bold, italic, etc).

What I’ve tried in the cloud API so far:

  • Converting to PDF with notes:
    The notes convert nicely along with the slide, but there’s no way to convert just them, without the slide.

  • Reading “notes slide info”:
    Just gets the text with all formatting removed, inconsistently. Sometimes a “(1)” remains, sometimes doesn’t, etc.

  • Converting the notes slide to an image (/slides/slides/{slideIndex}/notesSlide/{format}):
    This seems to convert the whole slide and not just the notes. Not sure what is the point of this API compared to /slides/slides/{slideIndex}/{format} which basically does the same thing with more output formats.

  • Converting to HTML/HTML5 with notes:
    As mentioned in my other post, this doesn’t seem to work currently. I was thinking maybe I could convert to HTML and extract just the HTML for the notes from the output. But since I can’t get it to output with notes, that’s not an option right now.

Is there anything else in the API that I’m missing and could get me the output I want?
Or is there some SDK-only feature that could help me achieve this?

I’ve opened a few issues in the past 24 hours but this one is my main reason for considering aspose.slides in the first place. I want to be able to extract slides and notes from a pptx and embed them on a website separately. Which is why a single PDF with the slide and the notes isn’t enough.

Thanks in advance.

2

@totoguy,
Thank you for posting the inquiry and your issue description. It will take me some time to find information for you. We will reply to you as soon as possible.

3

@totoguy,
Unfortunately, I’ve not found a way to get slide notes with text formatting. I’ve added a ticket with ID SLIDESCLOUD-1477 to our issue tracking system. Our development team will consider implementing such a feature. You will be notified when the issue is resolved.

I was able to receive the same result using these APIs and added a ticket with ID SLIDESCLOUD-1478 to get an explanation from our development team or fix it. We will inform you of any progress.

4

Is there any way to utilize NotesSlide.NotesTextFrame.ParagraphCollection.ExportToHtml() from the SDK to achieve this?

And if so, what would be the easiest way for me to test this locally on a Mac using python? From what I saw, the Aspose.Slides pypi package doesn’t seem to support macs.

5

@totoguy,
As far as I know, there is no such a feature in Aspose.Slides Cloud SDK but there is a similar way in our on-premises library like this:

var html = slide.NotesSlideManager.NotesSlide.NotesTextFrame.Paragraphs.ExportToHtml(firstParagraphIndex, paragraphCount, options);

If I understand correctly, you mean our on-premises library Aspose.Slides for Python. Could you please confirm?

6

Yes, I’m referring to the on-premise library.
I’m asking if this method does what I’m looking for, and what is the easiest way for me to test it considering my configuration (python code base on a mac).

Using the on-premise library is less ideal than your on-premise cloud docker solution, but if this library method does what I need, I may consider it.

7

@totoguy,
You are right, Aspose.Slides for Python does not support macOS yet. Unfortunately, I cannot link this Cloud forum thread to an appropriate task for the on-premises library. If you want to get a notification about macOS support, you should create a new topic on Aspose.Slides forum.

8

The issues you have found earlier (filed as SLIDESCLOUD-1477) have been fixed in Aspose.Slides Cloud 22.7. You can check all fixes on the Release Notes page.