Microsoft Copilot has arrived in PowerPoint, revolutionizing how we create presentations by integrating AI-powered assistance directly into the app. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk through how to get Copilot in PowerPoint, explore its key features, test its capabilities, and even discuss how to use your own custom PowerPoint templates with Copilot.
Whether you’re a busy professional, educator, or content creator, this new AI integration promises to transform your PowerPoint workflow by automating slide creation, enhancing design, generating images, and much more. Let’s dive into everything you need to know about PowerPoint Copilot and how it can change your presentation game forever.
Table of Contents
- Getting Copilot in PowerPoint
- Creating Slides from a Prompt
- Creating Slides from a Reference File
- Exploring Additional Copilot Functions
- Generating Images with Copilot
- Using Custom PowerPoint Templates with Copilot
- Managing Animations and VBA Automation
- Final Thoughts and Future of Copilot
- Frequently Asked Questions
Getting Copilot in PowerPoint
The first step to experiencing the power of Copilot is to get access to it in your PowerPoint application. The process isn’t as straightforward as installing a simple add-in; it involves understanding Microsoft 365 subscription plans and ensuring you have the right licenses.
Choosing the Right Microsoft 365 Plan
Microsoft offers multiple Copilot subscription plans categorized into three main types:
- Business
- Enterprise
- Personal
While the personal plan may seem like the obvious choice for individual users, some advanced Copilot features—such as creating a presentation from a file—are available only with the Business Copilot subscription.
For example, to test the full suite of features, the video creator opted for the Business Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, priced at $30 per month. However, it’s important to note that this subscription covers only the Copilot functionality itself.
To use Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint alongside Copilot, you need a separate license. For business users, this means an additional $15 per month for the Microsoft 365 Business plan, bringing the total to $45 per month.
This pricing structure might seem expensive, but it unlocks powerful AI-driven tools that can save you countless hours on presentations and document creation.
Installing and Activating Copilot in PowerPoint
Once you have the appropriate subscriptions, setting up Copilot in PowerPoint is straightforward:
- Open PowerPoint.
- Go to File > Account.
- Click Update Now to ensure your PowerPoint is up to date.
- Click Update License to activate your Copilot subscription.
- Restart PowerPoint.
After restarting, you should see two new Copilot buttons in the PowerPoint interface, signaling that the AI assistant is ready to use.
If you don’t see these buttons, double-check your subscription and updates as described above.
Creating Slides from a Prompt
One of the most exciting features of Copilot in PowerPoint is the ability to generate a full presentation based on a simple text prompt. This means you can describe the topic or theme you want, and Copilot will build the slides for you.
How It Works
Using the first Copilot button (which opens a large canvas window), you can enter a prompt directly. For example, the video creator used the prompt:
“Create a presentation about the use of AI for designing presentations.”
After submitting the prompt, Copilot quickly generates an outline view that shows the title and main sections of the presentation. You can rearrange these sections by dragging them around and even add additional topics if desired.
Generating Slides
Once satisfied with the outline, clicking the Generate Slides button will prompt Copilot to create slides for each section. This process includes adding slide titles, content, and relevant images, followed by applying a cohesive theme across all slides.
The video creator kept the process in real-time to demonstrate how quickly Copilot works. The AI-generated presentation appeared in the Slide Sorter view, which provides a bird’s eye view of all slides.
Each section begins with a section slide, helping maintain a clear structure throughout the presentation.
Slide Content and Design
The generated slides include AI-created images and text content. For example, the first slide featured animations applied to text boxes and a fade transition between slides. The design was simple but clean, with images typically placed on one side and text on the other.
This quick creation process enables users to generate a full presentation in seconds, a significant time saver compared to manual slide creation.
Creating Slides from a Reference File
Another powerful Copilot feature is creating a presentation from an existing document file, such as a Word document. This allows users to leverage pre-existing content and transform it into a professional presentation automatically.
Preparing the Reference File
In the video, the creator prepared a Word document with:
- Over 1,200 words of content
- Images
- Tables
- Charts (as images, not editable Excel charts)
This document served as the input for Copilot to generate slides.
Using Copilot to Generate Slides from the File
To use this feature:
- Click the Replace with New Presentation button in PowerPoint’s Copilot interface.
- Choose the reference file (the Word document).
- Click the arrow to start the process.
Copilot will replace all existing slides with new ones generated from the reference file. It’s important to save your work before starting, as this action overwrites the current presentation.
Results and Observations
The generated presentation showed a different slide theme, indicating Copilot selects themes based on the presentation topic.
The slides were clean and included animations similar to the first test. Importantly, Copilot was able to insert tables from the Word document as editable PowerPoint tables. However, charts were included as images only, with no editable Excel chart conversion.
Overall, this feature demonstrates how Copilot can quickly transform detailed documents into structured presentations with minimal effort.
Exploring Additional Copilot Functions
Copilot offers several other handy functions to enhance your PowerPoint workflow beyond slide generation.
Extracting Key Information and Summaries
You can ask Copilot to extract key information or summarize your presentation. For example, asking for a summary of the current slides yields a concise overview, helping you understand or prepare talking points quickly.
Asking General Questions
Copilot is not limited to slide content; you can ask general questions related to presentations. For example, querying “What is the readable font size for presentations?” returns helpful font size suggestions for titles and body text.
Extracting Text from Images
One particularly useful feature is the ability to extract text from images. This works well for photos of handwritten notes, screenshots, or any image containing readable text.
To do this:
- Paste the image into PowerPoint.
- Ask Copilot to extract the text from the image.
Copilot analyzes the image and converts the text, making it editable within PowerPoint.
Generating Images with Copilot
Copilot also integrates with Microsoft Designer to generate images directly within PowerPoint.
Using the Visual Creator Agent
You can start a chat with a visual creator agent and provide prompts for image generation. For example, asking “What if PowerPoint was a superhero and how that superhero would look like?” generates four unique image options representing PowerPoint as a superhero.
You can insert any of these images as slides in your presentation.
Recreating Images in Different Styles
Copilot can also transform existing images into different artistic styles. For instance, requesting the images to be recreated in an origami style produced paper-like superhero images.
This feature opens creative possibilities for customizing the visual style of your presentations effortlessly.
Using Custom PowerPoint Templates with Copilot
If you use a custom PowerPoint template for your company or brand, you might wonder how Copilot handles this. By default, Copilot selects slide designs and themes automatically, which may not match your branding.
Creating Copilot-Optimized Templates
Microsoft provides guidance on creating custom PowerPoint templates optimized for Copilot. The key points include:
- Giving specific names to slide layouts using keywords like title, agenda, section, content, and conclusion.
- Including a variety of slide layouts for each type with different placeholder sizes to allow Copilot to choose the best fit.
An article on techcommunity.microsoft.com explains the process in detail and provides a starter template to help you get started.
Example: Custom Template by One Skill PPT
The video creator built a custom PowerPoint template optimized for Copilot, featuring a green color scheme, gradients, and animated bubbles in the background.
This template is available for free as part of the PowerPoint Animation Mastery course‘s bonus lessons.
Testing Copilot with a Custom Template
Using the custom template, the creator tested the Replace with New Presentation command with the same prompt as before. Copilot generated slides that adhered to the custom template’s design.
However, because the template had animations set in the Slide Master view, and Copilot added additional animations in the normal view, some slides showed double animations.
Managing Animations and VBA Automation
To resolve the double animation issue, you can manually delete animations added by Copilot in the normal view, leaving only the Slide Master animations intact.
Steps to Fix Animation Overlaps
- Open the Animation Pane in PowerPoint.
- Identify animations added in the normal view (usually marked with zero).
- Delete these animations to keep only Slide Master animations.
For presentations with many slides, manually deleting animations can be tedious. Fortunately, Copilot can help by generating VBA code to automate the process.
Generating VBA Code with Copilot
Simply ask Copilot to write code that deletes all animations from the normal view. Copilot provides a VBA macro which you can insert into the Visual Basic editor:
- Go to Developer > Visual Basic.
- Insert a new module.
- Paste the VBA code provided by Copilot.
- Run the macro to remove unwanted animations.
This automation ensures your presentation maintains a clean animation flow without manual effort.
Final Thoughts and Future of Copilot
Using Microsoft Copilot in PowerPoint is an exciting glimpse into the future of AI-assisted presentation creation. The technology enables users to:
- Create full presentations from simple prompts in seconds.
- Generate slides from detailed reference documents.
- Extract text from images effortlessly.
- Generate custom AI images and modify their styles.
- Integrate with custom templates for branded presentations.
While Copilot currently produces basic but clean designs, it doesn’t yet support advanced PowerPoint features like infographics, slide zooms, or morph transitions. However, the potential for future enhancements is vast, and continued updates will likely bring even more powerful capabilities.
For those who frequently create presentations, Copilot promises to be a valuable tool that can save time and enhance creativity.
If you’re interested in incorporating Copilot into your PowerPoint workflow, consider the subscription requirements and explore the features outlined above to maximize your productivity.
As always, feel free to share your experiences or questions about Copilot in the comments below!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Microsoft Copilot in PowerPoint?
Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered assistant integrated into PowerPoint that helps users create presentations quickly by generating slides from text prompts, reference files, and even creating images.
How do I get Copilot in PowerPoint?
You need a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, typically the Business plan, along with a Microsoft 365 license for Office apps. After subscribing, update and activate your PowerPoint to see Copilot features.
Can Copilot create presentations from Word documents?
Yes. You can upload a Word document as a reference file, and Copilot will generate a presentation based on its content, including text, images, and tables.
Does Copilot support custom PowerPoint templates?
Yes. By creating templates optimized for Copilot with specific slide layout names and placeholders, you can ensure Copilot-generated slides follow your company branding and design style.
Can Copilot generate images for my presentation?
Yes. Copilot uses Microsoft Designer to generate AI images based on prompts and can apply different artistic styles to images.
How do I fix animation conflicts between Copilot and my template?
Copilot may add animations in the normal view that overlap with animations in the slide master. You can manually remove these or use VBA macros generated by Copilot to automate the cleanup.
Is Copilot worth the subscription cost?
While the combined cost of Copilot and Microsoft 365 apps can be significant, the time saved and creative possibilities may justify the investment for frequent PowerPoint users and professionals.
