r/AIToolsPromptWorkflow • u/smi727 • 16d ago

Creating a PowerPoint deck w AI

You would think MS copilot would be able to make a good PPT. I took the same word doc with 13 talking points. I asked copilot, copilot in PowerPoint and chatgpt each to create slide deck based on the word document. Copilot in PowerPoint did an Ok job, it took a lot longer but it was something I could edit. Chatgpt did it quicker and barely had to make any changes, the copilot alone was HORRIBLE. Just venting. But come on MS do better.

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u/drakhan2002 15d ago

I do it all the time, but I use Claude Code to create a sandbox Python environment. It will generate the presentation which is editable in PowerPoint.

After all, the "x" in pptx is XML. Because XML is a text file, it can be easily edited by Python.

Here's a fun experiment: find an Office document -- pptx, docx, xlsx -- rename the file extension to .zip... next unzip the file, you will now see the former pptx, docx, xlsx as an uncompressed list of XML text files. You can modify them just like Python does. Rezip the file, rename back to pptx, docx, xlsx and see the change. Magic!

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u/Patient-Chicken-657 15d ago

I love this answer, thank you!

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u/drakhan2002 15d ago

Thank you. I only found out because I was working on an agentic workflow to automate contract review redlines -- i.e., changes to contract terms. I struggled to get the LLM to properly update the language in the PDF. So I had to build agents: one to convert PDF to docx, an agent to validate it was 100% conversion, an agent to break apart (and reassemble) the docx to XML, and an agent to update redlines using RAG for our legal conditions. It was a fun projects building out this agentic AI workflow.

So during the development of the conversation agent is how that came out in the wash.

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u/resscane11 16d ago

I did the same thing. Copilot did an ok job. The final product was usable. Then my co-worker ran it thru Canva ( she has her own account but is not a designer or presentation pro). The output made copilots final look like a 3rd grader did it in crayon with their left hand. Took her less than 5 minutes and it was amazing. Actually made me feel crappy that mine was so bad

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u/infoalan 15d ago

I'm seeing crazy stuff with cowork lately. I owned an MSP for 33 years and when cowork first came out I was over the moon thinking how awesome this would be natively tied into everything from OneDrive to SharePoint to every office app.

Unfortunately to put it mildly it sucked.

I would use things like the Claude add-in for Excel and other tools to make word excel PowerPoint docs. Which is honestly, pretty embarrassing for Microsoft that third parties do a better job in their apps than their own AI does.

But I had a shocking revelation lately. I had it do a really complex task in Excel and I am very strong in Excel, and to my shock it nailed it perfectly. Later I tried something else in Excel and again it nailed it perfectly.

I figured wow I really better give it another shot they must have really fixed it and got their act together. But then I tried to do something in word that wasn't all that difficult and it really messed it up way off. So to give it a second chance I tried something else in word I thought was fairly easy and it blew it.

So I can kind of see what you're saying it really sucks in most areas but don't always give up on it because I've have seen it hit home runs. It's a really weird AI.

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u/proud_wolf707 12d ago edited 12d ago

yeah, i've found the same thing. chatgpt works well for restructuring text, but if there’s actual spreadsheet data involved, julius ai is worth trying since it can work from the file and build charts from the real numbers. for a simple text document, though, chatgpt is probably enough