Are you looking for an efficient way of creating modern, multi-slide PowerPoint presentations? If so, then Microsoft Copilot is a game-changer! Copilot is an everyday AI companion that can work with you inside your favorite Office applications, making you more efficient and productive.
In this article, we are going to explore how to use Copilot and Microsoft Designer, a powerful AI design tool, in PowerPoint to quickly create and edit presentations.
Set yourself up for Success: Copilot pre-requisites
In PowerPoint, the Copilot icon can be found on the Home ribbon.
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If the Copilot button is greyed out (inaccessible), we need to make sure that we have completed the following steps:
- Save the presentation to the OneDrive account associated with your Copilot license (File > Save As > OneDrive).
- Toggle on autosave.
Create a presentation with Copilot
In this scenario, we are a tech startup called Infotech. We are looking to create a sales pitch presentation to dazzle potential investors.
Let’s use Copilot to help us with this.
Create a blank presentation
- Open PowerPoint.
- From the File tab, click New and select Blank Presentation.
- From the Home tab, select Copilot.
The Copilot pane
The Copilot pane is split into halves. The top half shows four prompt suggestions, which are a good place to start when using Copilot.
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The lower half is where we type our prompts and ask questions.
- Select Using this presentation.
Note: The prompt area has dictation capabilities which can be useful for people with accessibility or mobility issues. Click the microphone icon to speak instead of type.
- In the prompt box, type the following: “Create a sales pitch presentation for a tech startup called Infotech to impress potential investors and secure investments."
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- Click Send.
Copilot will generate a multi-slide presentation with placeholder text. This text is AI-generated based on the prompt you provided.
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Redesign slides with Microsoft Designer
The AI-generated images in the presentation provide a starting point. You can further customize the presentation with your own or your organization’s images.
- Click on an image in the presentation.
- From the Picture Format tab, in the Adjust group, click Change Picture.
- Choose a picture source from the drop-down list.
In this example, I’m going to use a Stock Image.
- Click Insert.
We can change the look and feel of each slide in our presentation using Microsoft Designer, Microsoft’s AI design tool.
If you don’t see the Designer pane open automatically, click the Home tab and then Designer.
- Choose a new design to apply to the slide.
- Repeat this process for each slide in the deck to quickly redesign slides and achieve a consistent look.
Edit the presentation with Copilot
We can use Copilot to make edits and structural change to our presentation.
Speaker notes
A cool feature of Copilot is that it automatically creates speaker notes and adds them to the presentation.
- Click the View tab.
- In the Show group, click Notes.
The notes will show at the bottom of the slide. You can edit the notes from here or go to View > Notes Page for a more focused view of the notes.
Summarize the presentation
Copilot can summarize large presentations and produce a concise overview. This is useful if you are looking to send an email that gives people a summary of the key points in the presentation.
- Click in the prompt area.
- Type the prompt, “Summarize this presentation”.
- Click Send.
Copilot will return a summary of the deck with references. The reference number tells us which slide in the desk the summary item relates to.
- Click Copy to copy the summary to the clipboard.
We can now paste this information into an Outlook email, a Teams channel, a Word document etc.
Create a presentation from a file
When we create a presentation from scratch using Copilot, the text and images are AI-generated.
We can create more customized presentations by starting with an existing document.
- From File, click New and choose Blank presentation.
- On the Home tab, click Copilot.
- Choose the prompt, “Create a presentation from file.”
In this example we are going to use an existing Word document. To use an existing file, the file needs to be saved in OneDrive.
- Click the Files tab.
- Select the file from the list.
Alternatively, we can paste the link to the OneDrive file directly into the prompt area.
- Open the file.
- Click Share and Copy Link.
- Click Copy.
- Go back to PowerPoint and paste the link into the prompt area.
- Click Send.
Copilot will use the information and images in the file to build a presentation. It will automatically add notes to each slide and show you the outline the presentation will be based on.
We can then use Designer to redesign our slides or manually make changes.
Conclusion
What do you think of Microsoft Copilot and Designer in PowerPoint?
Remember, we’ve only scratched the surface here with what Copilot can do. I encourage you to try it out for yourself and start unleashing the power of Copilot!