ppt (HSLF) Overview

HSLF is the legacy PowerPoint 97-2003 .ppt implementation. Coverage is ~12%.

Status

HSLF is currently a preservation-first reader. It can open OLE2 .ppt files, inventory streams, read the PowerPoint Document record tree, recover slide order, extract text from TextCharsAtom and TextBytesAtom records, and no-op write the compound file back out. This is useful for archive discovery and cautious round-trip preservation, but it is not a slide authoring or shape editing engine.

The next planned work is to deepen Java POI interop assertions and add a usermodel only where preservation is already stable.

Basic Text Probe

using DotnetPoi.HSLF.UserModel;

using var stream = File.OpenRead("input.ppt");
using var ppt = new HSLFSlideShow(stream);

foreach (var slide in ppt.getSlides())
{
    foreach (var text in slide.getTextParagraphs())
        Console.WriteLine(text);
}

Supported Today

• OLE2 .ppt open
• OLE2 stream inventory
• PowerPoint Document record tree scan with raw record preservation
• Slide count and slide order reconstruction
• Text extraction from TextCharsAtom and TextBytesAtom
• No-op write / round-trip preservation

Limitations

• Java POI direction-B assertion is still pending
• No shapes, images, comments, notes, animations, transitions, or master/layout editing model
• No public editing API

For new presentations, prefer pptx / XSLF.