Exercise 2, Task 2: Use Copilot in PowerPoint to create an executive presentation

Your next task is to share the information that you captured in the Smart Sensor contract comparison document in tomorrow’s Finance leadership meeting. Visual clarity and brevity are key. You plan to use Copilot in PowerPoint (Office Agent) to generate a presentation that summarizes your key takeaways and includes recommendations for mitigating the identified risks. Ensure the deck is concise and visually engaging.

Using Copilot in PowerPoint

PowerPoint provides two ways to use Copilot: standard Copilot prompts for quickly generating slide content or summaries, and Edit with Copilot in the Copilot pane for making direct, in‑place edits to slides, layouts, and presentation structure.

  • You should use Copilot’s standard prompts in PowerPoint when you want to draft slides quickly, summarize content, or generate speaker notes without changing the structure of the deck. When using the Copilot pane, if you enter a prompt without selecting Edit with Copilot, Copilot responds in a chat‑style mode that generates suggestions or content separately, rather than making direct, in‑place changes to the presentation.

  • You should use Edit with Copilot when you want Copilot to work directly in the presentation—such as reorganizing slides, refining slide text, improving layouts, or making iterative edits across multiple slides. Edit with Copilot is optimized for in‑place presentation work, so it understands slide structure and can apply changes directly to the deck, rather than just suggesting content in a separate response.

In summary, use chat‑style Copilot for thinking and generating ideas; use Edit with Copilot for hands‑on editing inside the file. Copilot typically previews slide or layout changes and, once you confirm, it applies those changes directly to the slide deck rather than expecting the user to explicitly apply them through copy and paste.

This task uses the Edit with Copilot functionality.

Perform the following steps to complete this task:

  1. In your Microsoft Edge browser, go to the Microsoft 365 home page, select Apps in the navigation pane, and then select PowerPoint from the Apps menu.

  2. In PowerPoint for the web, create a blank presentation.

  3. Select the Home tab if the Home tab ribbon doesn’t appear. Then select Copilot at the end of the Home tab ribbon.

  4. In the Copilot pane, select the plus (+) sign in the prompt field and then select Add work content in the drop-down menu. Attach the Smart Sensor contract comparison file that you created in the prior task.

  5. Verify the Edit with Copilot icon appears next to the plus (+) sign in the prompt field. If you don’t see it, select the plus sign and then select Edit with Copilot in the drop-down menu. The icon should now appear in the prompt field.

  6. In the Copilot pane, enter in the prompt field a description of what you want Copilot to create. Remember to address the four key areas of an effective prompt. It should ask Copilot to create a slide presentation that summarizes the key findings from the attached Smart Sensor contract comparison file. The presentation should be targeted to the Finance leadership team. It should include a separate slide for each key finding topic area, such as Pricing, Delivery Timelines and Terms, Warranties and Support, and so on. Each slide should compare the contract features for Adatum Corporation and Contoso, Ltd. for the selected area. Tell Copilot to use visuals to keep the presentation engaging, and to use bullet points on the slides for clarity.

  7. If Copilot asks a series of questions related to the presentation, select the answers that you want it to apply. Select the Confirm button once you finish answering the questions. It might also ask a second series of questions, one of which might be to select a slide template. Keep in mind that if you don’t select a template, Copilot simply presents text on plain white slides. Again, select the answers that you want it to apply, or select Skip all if you want Copilot to use its best judgment.

  8. Copilot in PowerPoint uses this information to generate a list of slides, which might take a few minutes.

  9. During our testing, we experienced different results with regards to slide generation. Copilot sometimes generated the slides automatically, with no further confirmation needed. Other times, it provided an outline of the slides in the Copilot chat pane, and it suggested several options as to how it could proceed. If you experience the latter scenario, tell it to proceed with the outline. In either case, it typically took several minutes for Copilot to generate the slides.

  10. Review the slides that Copilot generated. While you feel that you have a solid foundation for the Finance leadership presentation, you notice a few changes that you would like to make. First off, you’re confident that leadership is going to ask about risk mitigation, which isn’t mentioned in the presentation. Before requesting a new slide, you must first indicate where you want the slide to appear in the deck. Review the slides and find a location where this topic would fit. Then in the slide pane on the left, select where you want Copilot to insert the slide. Now that you’ve selected the location, enter a prompt that asks Copilot to add a slide that contains the top recommendations for mitigating risks. The slide should also include a visual emphasis, such as callouts or highlights, for critical points.

  11. Copilot might once again ask you a series of questions related to this new slide. In fact, it might ask you to select the template to use, even though you specified a template during the initial slide generation. It might take several minutes for Copilot to generate the slide.

  12. Once again in our testing, we saw that Copilot might add the slide automatically to the slide deck, with no further confirmation needed. Other times, it provided an outline of the slide in the Copilot chat pane, and it suggested several options as to how it could proceed. If you experience the latter scenario, tell it to add the planned slide to the presentation. In either case, it typically took several minutes for Copilot to generate the slide.

  13. You now want Copilot to add a Vendor Advantage Summary slide. You want this slide added to the end of the deck, so locate your cursor in the deck accordingly. Then ask Copilot to add a Vendor Advantage Summary slide that indicates which vendor offers better points for each topic covered in the presentation.

  14. Review the slide that Copilot generated at the end of the deck. Finally, you want Copilot to create an action plan slide. You want this to be the final slide in the deck, so select in the slide deck after the final slide. Then ask Copilot to add an Action Plan slide that identifies the next steps for negotiations and risk mitigation. The slide should include a timeline and responsible roles.

  15. Review the action plan slide that Copilot generated. During testing, Copilot sometimes failed to include the timeline. If that happens, you could add a new slide in which you ask Copilot to create a Next Steps timeline. Once Copilot generates the timeline slide, you can leave it as a separate slide or manually copy the timeline into the original slide.

  16. Save the PowerPoint file to your OneDrive account as Smart Sensor contract comparison - Finance.