If you're wondering how to use Copilot in PowerPoint to upgrade your presentations, you're in the right place. For the last year, Microsoft has invested heavily in making its Copilot generative AI assistant the ultimate tool for next-level productivity.
Today, the Copilot experience is available in various flavors, from the standard Microsoft Copilot (previously Bing Chat) to Microsoft 365 Copilot and even Security Copilot.
There are also various ways to access Copilot for PowerPoint. If you want the most advanced experience (including the ability to customize Copilot with Copilot Studio), you’ll need a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription. Alternatively, you can use a Microsoft Copilot Pro subscription to access the basic features in PowerPoint for the web.
What Can Copilot Do in PowerPoint?
Before we look at how to use Copilot in PowerPoint, let's outline what you can do with the tool. Microsoft’s Copilot solution is a generative AI assistant built by Microsoft and infused into various products, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Teams, and Excel.
In PowerPoint, Copilot helps users create, edit, and enhance presentations. It can also assist with summarizing content and optimizing slideshows.
Like all of the Copilot experiences integrated into Microsoft’s Office apps, Copilot for PowerPoint features the same underlying LLM technology, Microsoft's security, identity, and privacy compliance policies, and access to Microsoft Graph. It also allows you to interact with a generative AI bot using natural language prompts.
You can ask Copilot to create a presentation based on a specific topic or summarize an existing presentation to make it shorter and snappier. Copilot can also restructure your slides to tell a more cohesive story. Plus, it can implement your organization's branding into every presentation so you can present a consistent image to customers and stakeholders.
Like other versions of Copilot, the AI app in PowerPoint can pull information from your other Microsoft resources, such as OneDrive files or Word Documents. This saves users time and effort in creating highly relevant, unique presentations.
How to Enable Microsoft Copilot in PowerPoint
Like the Copilot experience in Microsoft’s other productivity and office apps, Copilot for PowerPoint can deliver many benefits to users. It can save you time producing a first draft of your presentation, designing graphics, and more. Plus, it can stimulate your creativity with various suggestions to enhance your presenting capabilities.
Of course, before you can learn how to use Copilot in PowerPoint effectively, you need to know how to enable access to the tool.
If you’re using Copilot in PowerPoint as an individual, you can access basic Copilot features in the web version of the app with a Copilot Pro subscription for $20 per month per user. There’s nothing to “activate” here. All you need to do is purchase your plan and access PowerPoint on the web.
If you want to use Copilot in PowerPoint in the desktop versions of the app, , you’ll need a subscription to Microsoft 365. Alternatively, if you want enterprise-grade security and advanced features (like Copilot Studio), you’ll need a Copilot for Microsoft 365 subscription. That will cost you $30 per month per user.
Business users will also need an approved Microsoft 365 plan, such as Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Basic, Premium, and Standard.
You'll also need a Microsoft Entra ID and all the relevant app accounts you will use with PowerPoint. This means potentially setting up a OneDrive account (for saving and sharing files), a Teams account for PowerPoint presentations in meetings, and a Microsoft Loop account.
When enabling Copilot for your organization, it is also worth ensuring you have the right security strategies in place. You can find handy guidance on preparing your privacy settings for Copilot here.
How to Use Copilot in PowerPoint: Getting Started
Once you set up your licenses and accounts, learning how to use Copilot in PowerPoint is pretty straightforward. Open a PowerPoint presentation and click on the “Copilot” icon in the “Home” tab of the ribbon at the top of the screen.
The Copilot assistant should load on the right side of your screen, giving you a text box (where you can enter prompts) and a selection of “example prompts” to work with.
Creating a Presentation or Slides with Prompts
If you’re starting from scratch, all you need to do is enter a prompt in the text box. Microsoft recommends giving the app plenty of context and details, such as "Act as an enterprise sales professional, and create a presentation for shareholders about sales figures in the last year. Include sections about customer retention, average order value, and business growth."
You can paste text from other files and links to online content into the chat box, too, if you want Copilot to include that extra information. Once Copilot generates a presentation for you, you can change the look and style of the whole piece or a slide. You’ll have the option to either make changes manually or use the “Designer” icon to see alternative versions of your slides.
Designing a Presentation with Templates
If you’re struggling to get started with your PowerPoint presentation, it might be worth using a template. Copilot can use the existing themes and templates saved by you (or your organization) to design a presentation for you. To use a template:
- Open an existing presentation with your theme or create a new presentation with a template or theme by clicking File > New.
- Click on the Copilot button in the Home tab
- Edit the presentation by asking Copilot to add a slide, organize your content, summarize slides, or add images.
Creating a PowerPoint Presentation from a File
Another way to learn how to use Copilot in PowerPoint quickly is to design presentations from an existing file. Notably, you can only do this if you have a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license. Currently, the feature isn’t available for those using Copilot Pro.
If you have the right license, you can create a PowerPoint document from a Word document by opening PowerPoint and selecting the Copilot button in the Home tab. Next:
- Click Create Presentation from file
- Choose the Word document you want to draw your content from. If you can’t find it straight away, you can search for the file name.
- Select Send to transfer the document to Copilot
The AI app will then draft a presentation for you using the content in the Word document. You can customize and edit it to suit your needs.
Notably, Microsoft shared a few tips for companies creating PowerPoint presentations from Word documents in Copilot, such as:
- Use Styles in Word: Using “Styles” in Word can help organize your document and assist Copilot in understanding how your document is structured. This will ensure the app can break your content up into comprehensive slides from your presentation. Make sure you structure your content under titles and headers whenever possible.
- Include images: Adding images to your Word document will allow Copilot to add them automatically to your presentation. You can always add images after, or ask Copilot to generate graphics for you if you don’t have any visuals already.
- Use a template: If your company uses a standard template for presentations, it’s a good idea to start with a template before pulling in your Word content. This will ensure you maintain consistency in your branded presentations.
How to Use Copilot in PowerPoint: Optimizing Your Presentation
Now you know how to use Copilot in PowerPoint to create a presentation, you might want to start taking advantage of some of the additional features Copilot offers. Here are some of the ways you can optimize your PowerPoint presentations with Copilot.
Add Slides and Images to Presentations
Copilot makes it easy to add new slides to your PowerPoint presentations in an instant. Just click on the Copilot icon and ask the chatbot to “add a slide about” whatever you want to cover. You can outline exactly what you want to talk about in the slide or ask Copilot to make suggestions.
Users can also add Copilot to add images to a presentation with prompts like “Add an image of a contact center.” The app will go through stock images and select a relevant image for you.
