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

Command	Description
oa update	Run the update pipeline on PPTX files
oa run	Execute a TOML runfile for batch processing
oa check	Validate PPT values against Excel source
oa info	Inspect a PPTX file (read-only)
oa diff	Compare two PPTX files side by side
oa config	Show all config keys and defaults
oa clean	Kill zombie Office processes

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:

Step	Description
Links	Re-point OLE links to the new Excel file
Tables	Populate PPT table cells from Excel ranges
Deltas	Swap delta indicator arrows based on value sign
Coloring	Apply sign-based color coding to _ccst tables
Charts	Update chart data links

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:

Prefix	Type	Description
ntbl_	Normal table	Updates cell text, preserves formatting
htmp_	Heatmap table	Applies 3-color scale from Excel
trns_	Transposed table	Swaps rows/columns from Excel
delt_	Delta indicator	Arrow swapped by value sign
_ccst	Color-coded	Cells colored positive/negative/neutral

Performance

Scenario	Time
Single 68-slide PPTX (155 OLE, 257 charts)	~6s
Batch 26 files via oa run	~2m 36s
ZIP pre-relink (411 links)	0.1s

License

MIT