Delete slides that contain a specific text string

Question

I'm working on an automated slide setup and depending on some opt-out variables I need to remove some of the slides if they are not desired in the final output. To solve this I have created a script that adds a simple text string {{remove-this-slide}} to the slides that need to be deleted.

However, when trying to get a script to delete the slides containing that string it keeps deleting my entire presentation...

This is what I have:

function deleteFunction() {
var currentPresentationSlide = SlidesApp.getActivePresentation().getSlides();
  for (i = 0; i < currentPresentationSlide.length; i++) {
    if (currentPresentationSlide[i].getPageElements().indexOf('{{remove-this-slide}}') > -1); {
    currentPresentationSlide[i].remove();
  }
 }
}

Can anyone figure out what's going wrong here?

Answer 1

How about this modification?

Modification points :

• The reason that the entire slides are deleted is ; after if (currentPresentationSlide[i].getPageElements().indexOf('{{remove-this-slide}}') > -1);. By this ;, if doesn't work and currentPresentationSlide[i].remove(); is always run.
• The text data cannot be retrieved from currentPresentationSlide[i].getPageElements(). When you want to search the text from the text box, please use currentPresentationSlide[i].getShapes().
  • From your question, I was not sure where you want to search the text from. So I supposed that you want to search the text from shapes. The shape includes the text box.

Modified script :

function deleteFunction() {
  var currentPresentationSlide = SlidesApp.getActivePresentation().getSlides();
  for (i = 0; i < currentPresentationSlide.length; i++) {
    var shapes = currentPresentationSlide[i].getShapes();
    for (j = 0; j < shapes.length; j++) {
      if (shapes[j].getText().asString().indexOf('{{remove-this-slide}}') > -1) {
        currentPresentationSlide[i].remove();
      }
    }
  }
}

Reference :

• getShapes()

If I misunderstand your question, I'm sorry.