Use Copilot in PowerPoint to Build the Comp Committee Board Deck

What This Does

Before a compensation committee meeting, you're usually building a deck from a merit summary, a renewal memo and last quarter's numbers. Copilot in PowerPoint turns one of those source documents into a first-draft deck, with slide structure, talking points and speaker notes already in place. You start editing instead of staring at a blank slide.

Before You Start

• You have PowerPoint open, either desktop or the web version
• Your organization has purchased the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on for your account. Look for the Copilot icon on the Home tab of the ribbon or a small circular icon in the bottom right of a new slide. If you don't see it, ask your Microsoft 365 admin or IT helpdesk whether the add-on is licensed for your seat (Microsoft's pricing page explains what the add-on covers)
• You have a source document ready: a Word memo, merit summary or renewal analysis Copilot can build from

Steps

1. Find the AI feature

Open a new, blank presentation. Copilot in PowerPoint only builds from a blank deck, not one already in progress. Select the Copilot icon on the Home tab, or click the icon in the bottom right corner of the first slide.

2. Tell it what you need

In the prompt box, type "Create presentation from file," then pick your source document from the suggestions list, or start typing its file name if it doesn't appear. For more control over structure, choose Add Content in the Copilot pane and switch to Agent Mode: describe the deck you want in a sentence or two, attach the source document, and review the outline Copilot proposes before it builds any slides.

3. Review and use the result

Copilot builds a draft, typically a title slide, a few content slides pulled from your document, and speaker notes under each one. Read every number against your source file before the meeting. Reorder or delete slides that don't fit the committee's usual format, and add your own framing where the draft reads too generic.

Real Example

Scenario: The quarterly comp committee meeting is in three days, and you have a five-page renewal and merit-budget memo in Word that needs to become a 10-slide deck.

What you type/do: With a blank presentation open, you select Copilot, type "Create presentation from file," and select the renewal and merit-budget memo from the suggestions list.

What you get: A draft deck with a title slide, an agenda slide, three or four slides summarizing the renewal numbers and merit budget with speaker notes, and a closing slide with recommended next steps. You swap the agenda for your committee's standard format and replace the generic recommendation slide with your actual proposal.

Tips

• Draft from the source memo, not from a one-line prompt. Copilot's slide content is only as accurate as the document it pulls from.
• Keep the finance-reviewed numbers in a locked appendix and paste those in yourself rather than letting Copilot regenerate them. That catches it if it paraphrases a figure incorrectly.
• Board and committee decks often carry individual executive pay figures before they're disclosed. Build the deck from a version of the memo with executive-level detail removed or aggregated, then add sensitive figures back in by hand once the draft structure is set.

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