How to delete unpopulated placeholder items using python-pptx
Question:
This is very simple, but I cannot find the actual method anywhere in the documentation or otherwise.
I am using the python-pptx module and all I need to do is delete a single placeholder item, an empty text box, on some slides (without having to create a completely new layout just for these slides) – the closest thing to an answer is here: http://python-pptx.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/placeholders-understanding.html under Unpopulated vs. populated but it still does not say how to actually delete/remove the placeholder.
I’ve tried all the obvious methods .delete(), .remove(), etc.
Answers:
There is no API support for this, but if you delete the text box shape element, that should do the trick. It would be something like this:
textbox = shapes[textbox_idx]
sp = textbox.element
sp.getparent().remove(sp)
Using the textbox variable/reference after this operation is not likely to go well. But otherwise, I expect this will do the trick.
Here is a follow-up to scanny’s answer based on the helloworld example in the docs. The code deletes the subtitle placeholder, which is empty in this case.
from pptx import Presentation
prs = Presentation()
title_slide_layout = prs.slide_layouts[0]
slide = prs.slides.add_slide(title_slide_layout)
title = slide.shapes.title
title.text = "Hello, World!"
subtitle = slide.placeholders[1]
sp = subtitle.element
sp.getparent().remove(sp)
prs.save('test.pptx')
This is very simple, but I cannot find the actual method anywhere in the documentation or otherwise.
I am using the python-pptx module and all I need to do is delete a single placeholder item, an empty text box, on some slides (without having to create a completely new layout just for these slides) – the closest thing to an answer is here: http://python-pptx.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/placeholders-understanding.html under Unpopulated vs. populated but it still does not say how to actually delete/remove the placeholder.
I’ve tried all the obvious methods .delete(), .remove(), etc.
There is no API support for this, but if you delete the text box shape element, that should do the trick. It would be something like this:
textbox = shapes[textbox_idx]
sp = textbox.element
sp.getparent().remove(sp)
Using the textbox variable/reference after this operation is not likely to go well. But otherwise, I expect this will do the trick.
Here is a follow-up to scanny’s answer based on the helloworld example in the docs. The code deletes the subtitle placeholder, which is empty in this case.
from pptx import Presentation
prs = Presentation()
title_slide_layout = prs.slide_layouts[0]
slide = prs.slides.add_slide(title_slide_layout)
title = slide.shapes.title
title.text = "Hello, World!"
subtitle = slide.placeholders[1]
sp = subtitle.element
sp.getparent().remove(sp)
prs.save('test.pptx')