Add Superscript and Subscript to PowerPoint Using Java

When we add a trademark, copyright or other symbol to our presentation, we might want the symbol to appear slightly above or below a certain text. In Microsoft PowerPoint, we can implement this effect simply by applying superscript or subscript formatting to the symbol. In this article, we will demonstrate how to achieve this task programmatically using Free Spire.Presentation for Java.

Import JAR Dependency (2 Methods)

● Download the free library and unzip it, and then add the Spire.Presentation.jar file to your project as dependency.

● You can also add the jar dependency to your maven project by adding the following configurations to the pom.xml.

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>com.e-iceblue</id>
        <name>e-iceblue</name>
        <url>http://repo.e-iceblue.com/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>
<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>e-iceblue</groupId>
        <artifactId>spire.presentation.free</artifactId>
        <version>5.1.0</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Steps and Sample Code

Free Spire.Presentation for Java provides the PortionEx.getFormat().setScriptDistance(float value) method for applying superscript or subscript formatting to text. The value can be set as positive or negative. The bigger the positive value, the higher the superscript will appear above your text. The smaller the negative value, the lower the subscript will appear below your text. The detailed steps are as follows:

• Create a Presentation instance and load a PowerPoint document using Presentation.loadFromFile() method.
• Get the desired slide using Presentation.getSlides().get() method.
• Add a shape to the slide using ISlide.getShapes().appendShape() method and set shape fill type and line color.
• Access the text frame of the shape using IAutoShape.getTextFrame() method, then clear the default paragraph in the text frame using ITextFrameProperties.getParagraphs().clear() method.
• Create a paragraph using ParagraphEx class, and add normal text to the paragraph using ParagraphEx.setText() method.
• Create a portion with text using PortionEx class, and then apply superscript or subscript formatting to the text using PortionEx.getFormat().setScriptDistance(float value) method.
• Set text color, font and font size for the normal text and the superscript or subscript text.
• Append the paragraph to the text frame of the shape using ITextFrameProperties.getParagraphs().append() method.
• Save the result document using Presentation.saveToFile() method.

import com.spire.presentation.*;
import com.spire.presentation.drawing.*;

import java.awt.*;

public class AddSuperscriptAndSubscript {
    public static void main(String []args) throws Exception {

        //Load a PowerPoint document
        Presentation presentation = new Presentation();
        presentation.loadFromFile("template.pptx");

        //Get the first slide
        ISlide slide = presentation.getSlides().get(0);

        //Add a shape to the slide
        IAutoShape shape = slide.getShapes().appendShape(ShapeType.RECTANGLE, new Rectangle(150, 100, 200, 50));
        shape.getFill().setFillType(FillFormatType.NONE);
        shape.getShapeStyle().getLineColor().setColor(Color.white);

        //Access the text frame of the shape
        ITextFrameProperties textFrame = shape.getTextFrame();
        //Clear the default paragraph in the text frame
        textFrame.getParagraphs().clear();

        //Create a paragraph with normal text
        ParagraphEx para = new ParagraphEx();
        para.setText("E=mc");

        //Create a portion with superscript text
        PortionEx tr = new PortionEx("2");
        tr.getFormat().setScriptDistance(40);

        //Append the portion to the paragraph
        para.getTextRanges().append(tr);

        para.getTextRanges().append(new PortionEx("\n"));

        //Set text color, font and font size for the normal text
        tr = para.getTextRanges().get(0);
        tr.getFill().setFillType(FillFormatType.SOLID);
        tr.getFill().getSolidColor().setColor(new Color(128,0,128));
        tr.setFontHeight(20);
        tr.setLatinFont(new TextFont("Arial"));

        //Set text color and font for the superscript text
        tr = para.getTextRanges().get(1);
        tr.getFill().setFillType(FillFormatType.SOLID);
        tr.getFill().getSolidColor().setColor(Color.BLUE);
        tr.setLatinFont(new TextFont("Arial"));

        //Append the paragraph to the text frame of the shape
        textFrame.getParagraphs().append(para);

        //Create another paragraph with normal text
        para = new ParagraphEx();
        para.setText("X");

        //Create a portion with subscript text
        tr = new PortionEx("100");
        tr.getFormat().setScriptDistance(-25);

        //Append the portion to the paragraph
        para.getTextRanges().append(tr);

        //Set text color, font and font size for the normal text
        tr = para.getTextRanges().get(0);
        tr.getFill().setFillType(FillFormatType.SOLID);
        tr.getFill().getSolidColor().setColor(new Color(128,0,128));
        tr.setFontHeight(20);
        tr.setLatinFont(new TextFont("Arial"));

        //Set text color and font for the subscript text
        tr = para.getTextRanges().get(1);
        tr.getFill().setFillType(FillFormatType.SOLID);
        tr.getFill().getSolidColor().setColor(Color.BLUE);
        tr.setLatinFont(new TextFont("Arial"));

        //Append the paragraph to the text frame of the shape
        textFrame.getParagraphs().append(para);

        //Save the result document
        presentation.saveToFile("AddSuperscriptAndSubscript.pptx", FileFormat.PPTX_2013);
    }
}

For more functions provided by the free PowerPoint library, you can refer to the documentation.