Copilot in Powerpoint

Question

I just purchased the Copilot add-on for my existing Microsoft 365 family subscription.

In powerpoint (on my MacBook), there is no prompt nor ability to create a presentation from file, like it shows in many online tutorials for Copilot.

Am I missing something?

Answer 1

Assuming you have the latest update (16.88) of PowerPoint installed, when you click the Copilot button on the Ribbon the Copilate pane will open and offer you these options:

Answer 2

Thank you for replying @jim. I do not have that "Create presentation from file" option, only the "Create presentation about" button.

Sadly and shockingly, I think I have finally figured out why. Not a good look for Microsoft. Read on!

It seems that, as a Microsoft 365 Family user, I can pay +$20/mo to add-on Copilot Pro (or 30 day free trial). However, the Copilot version that includes that "Create presentation from file" feature is only available for Microsoft 365 Business or Corporate users. Okay, easy enough, right? Just create a Microsoft 365 Business account (which I just did), purchase the $12.95/mo 365 subscription (which I just did), and add-on Copilot to get that feature (which I did not, because it's not the same $20/mo add-on option, it's $360 upfront(!) for 12 months, AND no free trial offered to even test if it would work well enough for my use case).

Microsoft makes you do some digging to figure all this out. Product naming doesn't help either-- "Copilot Pro" (with family subscription) sounds like a higher level product offering than just "Copilot" (for business subscription), and yet it's less functions & features. Go figure.

I could handle the increased monthly cost for 365 Business vs Family, and I could even deal with that increased 12 month cost (diff $120) between Copilot and Copilot Pro... but to force customers into a $360 upfront leap of faith on something that may not actually work well for the "create presentation from file" usecase (who knows if it would? no way to test it out!) ... that seems counterintuitive from a product management perspective.

Not sure what to do from here. Anybody have 365 business and also paying $360 for Copilot? I'd be happy to send you a sample pdf (I teach bible study 3x/week from a pdf teacher's lesson manual) and you could run it through "Create presentation from file" and send me back the raw ppt output. I would base my $360 buy/not buy decision on that. (Seems like Microsoft would want to offer something like this as a trial, even if it's a one time sample. Oh well.)

Why I'm looking at Copilot: Currently just creating a ppt for every lesson takes at least an hour, mostly converting/copying/pasting/massaging what's in the lesson manual into a powerpoint presentation. Even if Copilot wasn't perfect at it, it would just require editing and not creating... save a lot of time that I could focus on the actual lesson content.

Answer 3

Right now, create from file works only with files saved on OneDrive or SharePoint. I expect that to become more robust as time passes so that you could point to a file on your Mac.

I wish I could explain how Microsoft decides to market their products. I can't. I don't think their marketing department can, either. My Copilot subscription expired, and I get notices that I should renew and change my license from E3 to E5 or something like that, but it's still working and I won't change until the apps stop working.

If you put a small file on a shared drive I'd be happy to test and see how it goes.

Why a sample file is important for troubleshooting - - - - - - - and how to do it.