oa — Office Automation CLI

A Windows CLI tool that automates Microsoft Office (PowerPoint + Excel) via the COM API. Built in Rust for speed and safety.

Takes a PowerPoint template with linked OLE objects and Excel data, then updates tables, charts, delta indicators, and color coding — producing a fully populated report in seconds.

Features

• Update pipeline — Re-link OLE objects, populate tables, swap delta arrows, apply color coding, update charts
• Batch processing — TOML runfiles for processing dozens of files in one command
• Validation — Cell-by-cell check of PPT values against Excel source data
• ZIP pre-processing — Rewrite OLE/chart paths and chart data directly in PPTX XML (100x faster than COM for links)
• Inspection — Read-only analysis of PPTX shape inventory with per-slide breakdown

Installation

Requires Windows with Microsoft Office (PowerPoint + Excel) installed.

One-liner (no Rust needed)

PowerShell:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/albertxli/office-automation/main/install.ps1 | iex"

Downloads oa.exe, installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\oa, and adds it to your PATH automatically. Restart your terminal after install.

Or download manually from GitHub Releases.

Via crates.io (requires Rust)

cargo install office-automation

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/albertxli/office-automation.git
cd office-automation
cargo install --path .

Quick Start

# Update a presentation with new Excel data
oa update template.pptx -e data.xlsx -o report.pptx

# Batch process from a runfile
oa run batch.toml

# Validate output against Excel
oa check report.pptx -e data.xlsx

# Inspect a PPTX file
oa info template.pptx

# Per-slide shape breakdown
oa info -v template.pptx

Commands

See API.md for full command reference with all options and examples.

Runfile Example

data_path = "../data"
default_output = "output/{name}.pptx"

[templates]
t1 = "templates/template.pptx"

[[job]]
name = "Australia"
template = "t1"
data = "tracking_australia.xlsx"

[[job]]
name = "Japan"
template = "t1"
data = "tracking_japan.xlsx"

oa run batch.toml

See example_runfile.toml for a complete example.

Pipeline Steps

The update pipeline runs these steps in order:

Steps can be selectively run or skipped:

oa update report.pptx -e data.xlsx --steps tables,charts
oa update report.pptx -e data.xlsx --skip deltas

Shape Naming Conventions

The pipeline identifies shapes by name prefix:

Multiple delta template sets

Delta arrows are replaced by copying a template shape from slide 1. When a deck needs more than one arrow style (for example arrows with text on most slides and text-free arrows on a few), number the set on both sides:

The OLE name and the _pos/_neg/_none suffix work exactly as for delt_, e.g. delt2_Rev_DE_pos. If a set's templates are missing, that set is skipped with a warning and other sets still update. oa info lists every set found and its templates; oa check validates all sets.

Performance

License

MIT