In partnership with
📫 Subscribe | 🗣️ Hire us to speak | 🤝 Sponsor this newsletter | 🎓 Events
Welcome to the Friday edition of our newsletter. We spend Fridays going deeper into tools and trends related to generative AI (and Tuesdays sharing news updates).
Create and edit Powerpoint presentations with Microsoft Copilot
If you’re still building Powerpoint presentations manually, you’re missing out on one of the best new features of Microsoft Copilot. As of April 2026, Microsoft says agentic capabilities are available in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
This means Copilot can take multi-step, app-native actions directly in your documents, worksheets, and presentations. We can now let Copilot drive when it comes to Powerpoint. Many of you will see these options even without a Copilot Premium license.
Continue reading to learn how to create and edit Powerpoint presentations – and more!
It’s not too late to join us for AI Summer School
Our second meeting of the summer is Monday. Anyone signed up for our Gen AI Fundamentals course will have access to six weeks of assignments and Zoom calls with us. Sign into the course for details.
Innovation Profs’ online courses (Use code JUNE20 to save $20 off any course in the month of June):
Generative AI Fundamentals covers everything from how LLMs work to prompting, image tools, Copilot, and even vibe coding.
Google Gemini Essentials & Advanced Tools includes 120 minutes of videos to help you get the most out of Google Gemini.
Make the Switch to Claude helps you understand and use advanced Claude features like Projects, Skills, Cowork and more.
SUPPORT OUR SPONSOR
Your prompts are leaving out 80% of what you're thinking.
When you type a prompt, you summarize. When you speak one, you explain. Wispr Flow captures your full reasoning — constraints, edge cases, examples, tone — and turns it into clean, structured text you paste into ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI tool. The difference shows up immediately. More context in, fewer follow-ups out.
89% of messages sent with zero edits. Used by teams at OpenAI, Vercel, and Clay. Try Wispr Flow free — works on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.
Create a Powerpoint presentation in Copilot
You can now create a Powerpoint presentation from a prompt or from a document. To create from a prompt, you will want to open up a blank Powerpoint template.
Click on the Copilot logo in the bottom-right corner (it might still be in the upper-right corner if you have not updated Powerpoint).
This opens Copilot in the sidebar, as you see below.
Make sure “Allow editing” is selected above the prompt window so that Copilot can take actions on your document.
Type in a prompt with a description of the presentation you'd like Copilot to help you draft. Add files that Copilot should reference by pressing the plus sign. Click the arrow button to submit your prompt.
Copilot may ask you some clarifying questions such as who is the target audience of the presentation, what presentation and image style you'd like, etc. before generating an outline of your presentation. Share your preferences or skip and let Copilot decide.
I recommend sticking with a short presentation at first to speed up the process.
After awhile (this does take some time, so maybe catch up on Innovation Profs’ email newsletter archives), Copilot will give you the draft of your presentation.
After Copilot has generated your presentation, you can continue to chat with Copilot to edit and refine your slides. See some suggestions below on what you can do.
Edit a Powerpoint presentation
Sometimes we already have a Powerpoint presentation. Copilot can still help in this situation. Copilot can rewrite content in your presentation a couple of different ways. One way is just to prompt it to make a change.
“Make the content on Slide 6 more concise.”
You also can click on individual boxes of text to rewrite the text in that box.
Select the textbox containing the text you want to rephrase or replace.
Select the pen button that appears below the box (as seen above).
Choose one of the options: Auto-rewrite, Condense, Make professional, Make it a list or write a custom prompt.
Auto-rewrite: General improvements in grammar, spelling, and clarity.
Condense: Summarize text while preserving tone.
Make professional: Make text sound more professional without changing length.
Make a list: Summarize your paragraph in bullet points.
Custom prompt: Tell Copilot how you want to revise your text. For example, "Make this funny and easy to read."
You can also add slides to a presentation with a Copilot prompt.
Prompt Copilot to add a slide (or more than one slide) in the chat by telling it where to add a slide and what content to include. Attach a document if the slide(s) should be based off of info you already have. You may be asked clarifying questions before proceeding.
To add or change an image, you can ask Copilot to "Create an image of _____" and it will use ChatGPT’s image generator to create an AI generated image that you can insert into your presentation.
You can also use the power of Copilot to generate speaker notes by selecting that option under the View tab.
More Copilot in Powerpoint features
Want to know which slides might need special attention? Ask Copilot to Show key slides, and Copilot will try to identify which slides might be worthy of a look.
Skip straight to the call to action by asking Copilot to Show action items. You'll get a list of tasks that Copilot was able to identify in the presentation.
The Design Suggestions tab will suggest alternate design options for the slide you are currently viewing. Note: It won’t have suggestions for every slide.
You can prompt Copilot to translate a presentation to another language.
The Edit Photo button in the Picture Format tab lets you edit a photo using AI.
You can even match your company branding by starting with a template that includes that branding. Prompt Copilot to retain the presentation's theme and design, and Copilot will use existing layouts to build a presentation for you.
One final fun option is to get new slide ideas from Copilot. We uploaded our company template and asked Copilot to create new templates we can use inspired by the ones we already have.
