Exercise: Create a slide presentation using Microsoft 365 Copilot in PowerPoint
Proficiency in using Microsoft 365 Copilot in PowerPoint is a strategic skill for executives aiming to elevate the impact of their presentations. In the corporate world, effective communication through compelling slide decks is paramount. Copilot in PowerPoint serves as an intelligent collaborator, offering real-time suggestions and enhancements as executives craft their presentations. This tool not only accelerates the creation process but also ensures that the content is engaging, clear, and resonant with the intended audience.
Executives who become proficient in Copilot in PowerPoint gain a competitive edge by effortlessly refining their messaging, enhancing visual appeal, and maintaining a professional standard. This skill not only saves time but also positions executives to deliver presentations that leave a lasting impression, fostering effective communication, and bolstering leadership influence in the dynamic landscape of business interactions.
With Copilot in PowerPoint, you can create a presentation from an existing Word document. When you provide Copilot in PowerPoint with the link to your Word document, it can generate slides, apply layouts, and choose a theme for you.
Exercise
As the CFO at Fabrikam, Inc., an IT services firm located in Minneapolis, MN, you're meeting next week with the company's major shareholders to provide a presentation on the company's year-end financial performance. Your VP of Accounting provided you with a summary of the company's Income Statement.
In the prior exercise, you used Copilot in Word to write your speech to the shareholders based on the Income Statement. In this exercise, you plan to use Copilot in PowerPoint to create a slide presentation based on your speech. To do so, you must begin by copying the link to the Fabrikam Financial presentation.docx file that you created in the prior exercise.
In the prior exercise, you accessed the company's Income Statement in Copilot by accessing the file from the Most Recently Used (MRU) file list. In this exercise, you're going to gain experience accessing a file using a different process. Instead of using the MRU list, you plan to access the speech by copying its file path into Copilot through the Share option in Word. Perform the following steps to have Copilot in PowerPoint create a draft of your presentation:
If you have a Microsoft 365 tab open in your Edge browser, then select it now; otherwise, open a new tab and enter the following URL: https://www.office.com
On the Microsoft 365 navigation pane, select Word if it appears in the left-hand navigation pane. If it doesn't appear there, then select Apps in the navigation pane, and on the Apps page, select Word.
On the file page in Word, scroll down to the list of recent files and select Fabrikam Financial presentation.docx to open it in a new tab in your Microsoft Edge browser.
Copy the URL of the document by selecting the Share button in the upper-right corner, above the ribbon and selecting Copy Link from the drop-down menu that appears.
Tip
Copilot can occasionally have trouble using the URL from your address bar. Copy the link from the Share tray for best results.
In our testing, sometimes a Link created window appeared. If it appears for you, select Copy, which in turn displays the Link copied window. Other times, the link was automatically copied, in which case only the Link copied window appeared. In either case, you should close the Link copied window.
This returns you to the Word tab in your Edge browser, which displays the Fabrikam Financial presentation document. Close this Word tab.
You should now be back on the Home | Microsoft 365 Copilot tab in your browser. Select PowerPoint if it appears in the navigation pane. If it doesn't appear there, then select Apps in the navigation pane, and on the Apps page, select PowerPoint. In PowerPoint, select the Create blank presentation button.
Locate the Copilot icon that appears above the first slide. If a menu is already displayed below the icon, select the Create a new presentation with file option. If a menu doesn’t appear, select the Copilot icon and then select the Create a new presentation with file option from the menu that appears.
In the prior exercise, you linked a file into a prompt by selecting the file from the MRU list. In this exercise, we want you to gain experience linking a file into a prompt using another method. In the Copilot window that appears, you would normally select the Reference a file option in the prompt field. However, in this training exercise, even if the Fabrikam Financial presentation.docx appears in the MRU list, let's assume that it didn't. As such, you must paste the link to the file (which you copied earlier) into the Copilot prompt field. In the prompt field, Copilot automatically types in Create a presentation about. Place your cursor at the end of this prepopulated prompt and enter Ctrl+V to paste the link to this document into the prompt.
Select the Send icon.
Copilot in PowerPoint uses this information to generate a list of presentation topics. It doesn't generate the slides until you select the Generate slides button. Instead, it presents the topics first so that you can modify them, if necessary, before creating the slides.
You can rearrange the order of the topics if you wish. Within each topic group is the main topic title and a list of subtopics. If you hover inside the topic area, a Reorder Topic icon appears to the left of the topic. Continue to hold down this icon and then drag and drop the entire topic section up or down in the list to move it to a different place in the presentation.
If you wish to remove a topic from the presentation, hover over the topic and then select the trash can (Delete) icon that appears.
When you finalize the list of topics, select the Generate slides button. Doing so triggers Copilot to create a slide presentation based on the list of topics.
Once Copilot finishes generating the slide presentation, it displays the slides in Slide Sorter view. In the PowerPoint ribbon, select View. In the View ribbon, in the Presentation Views group, note the Slide Sorter option is selected. Select Normal to view the slides in the traditional order.
You're now free to review the slides and make any necessary updates. You can use the Designer tool to adjust the layouts.
By default, Copilot in PowerPoint doesn't generate speaker notes at the time it creates the slides. However, you can ask it during your initial prompt or after the slides are generated to add speaker notes to each slide. For example, now that the slides are created, enter the following prompt: Add speaker notes to each slide. Note: It might take Copilot a couple of minutes to generate the speaker notes.
Review the speaker notes that Copilot generated. During our testing, Copilot sometimes displayed the notes at the bottom of each slide; other times, we had to select the Notes option at the bottom of the page to view the notes for each slide. In either case, review the speaker notes that Copilot added to the presentation. Verify the notes call out the points that you want to make during the presentation.
Try using Copilot to update the presentation. For example, enter the following prompt: Add a new slide after slide 1. This slide should have an image of a mountain peak in the Alps. Towards the bottom of the slide, add a text box that says: "Fabrikam's company motto: We overcome every obstacle." Add speaker notes to this new slide that talk about how Fabrikam works diligently to solve every customer's request, never letting any obstacle stand in its way of success.
Review the new slide that was created. How successful was Copilot in creating this slide? Did it place it in the correct spot? How was the quality of the image and the slide in general?
While the remaining training exercises in this module don't use this presentation, you can either discard it or save it if you want for future reference.