Copilot in PowerPoint: Design and Polish

Overview

You have the content for your presentation, but the slides don’t look polished. Layouts are inconsistent, text is crowded, and the whole deck feels like a rough draft. Copilot in PowerPoint can help you design, reorganize, and enhance your existing presentations without starting over.

This video shows you how to use Copilot to take a working presentation and make it look professional.

What You’ll Learn

• Design Suggestions: How to get layout and formatting improvements from Copilot
• Content Improvements: How to enhance, simplify, and rewrite slide content
• Restructuring: How to reorganize your presentation for better flow
• Visuals: How to add images and visual elements to your slides

Script

Hook: Make your presentations look professional

You’ve got the content, but the presentation doesn’t look polished. Slides are text-heavy, layouts are inconsistent, and the formatting looks like it was done in a hurry.

Copilot can help you design, reorganize, and enhance your slides without starting over. In the next six minutes, you’ll learn how to improve design, refine content, restructure your deck, and add visuals.

Getting design suggestions from Copilot

Open your existing presentation and launch Copilot from the ribbon. Ask for design help with prompts like “Suggest a better layout for this slide” or “Make this presentation look more professional.”

Copilot uses PowerPoint Designer integration to suggest layout options based on your content. It considers how much text you have, whether you’ve included images or data, and recommends layouts that fit better. When you apply a suggestion, Copilot aligns elements, adjusts spacing, and applies consistent formatting across the slide.

If you’re working with a government-branded template, Copilot respects your template’s color scheme and fonts. Design suggestions stay within your template constraints, so you won’t lose agency branding when you apply recommendations. If your admin has deployed organization templates, those themes carry through to all design changes.

There are some limitations to keep in mind. Custom layouts with specific placeholder positions may not transfer perfectly. Always review each slide after applying design changes to ensure everything looks correct. Think of Copilot as your design assistant—it handles the heavy lifting, and you do the final quality check.

Adding and improving slide content

Copilot can improve the actual content on your slides—especially useful for government presentations that need to communicate clearly to diverse audiences.

To enhance existing slides, try “Add more detail to this slide about our security posture” or “Simplify this slide—it has too much text.” Ask “Add bullet points summarizing the key findings” to restructure how information is presented.

Speaker notes are another strength. Ask “Write speaker notes for all slides” to generate presenter guidance for the entire deck. Try “Expand the speaker notes on slide 3 with talking points” when a specific slide needs more support.

Rewriting content for different audiences is powerful. Ask “Rewrite this for a non-technical audience” to strip out jargon. Ask “Make the language more formal for executive briefing” when presenting to leadership.

Here’s a government example. You have a technical compliance report in slide format. Ask Copilot to create an executive summary slide in plain language, then add speaker notes so a non-technical presenter can deliver it confidently. You’ve adapted one presentation for two audiences.

Always review generated content for accuracy—ensure compliance-specific language hasn’t been changed.

Organizing and restructuring presentations

Copilot can restructure your deck so the narrative flows logically. Use prompts like “Organize this presentation into a logical flow” or “Move the recommendations section before the detailed findings.” Ask “Group related slides into sections” to create clear structure.

Add summary and transition slides for better navigation. Try “Add a summary slide at the end” or “Add an agenda slide at the beginning.” For longer presentations, “Create transition slides between major sections” gives your audience clear markers.

Copilot also helps you trim. Ask “Which slides can be combined or removed?” to identify redundancies. Follow up with “Consolidate slides 4 and 5 into one slide” for specific merges.

Here’s a government use case. You’re preparing a quarterly program review with 30 slides. Ask Copilot to reorganize with agenda, executive summary, progress by workstream, risks, and next steps. Add section dividers so your audience can follow along.

Best practice: tell Copilot your presentation goal so it optimizes the structure—for example, “This is a decision briefing—organize so the recommendation is clear by slide five.”

Adding images and visual elements

Text-heavy slides lose your audience. Ask Copilot to “Add an image to this slide that illustrates cybersecurity” or “Add relevant images to all slides.” Copilot pulls from Microsoft’s stock image library, and these images are licensed for business use.

For government users, there are practical considerations. Stock images may not include government-specific imagery like agency logos or classified environment screenshots. Review images for appropriateness in your context, and replace Copilot-suggested images with agency-approved visuals as needed.

Beyond photos, Copilot can suggest icon-based layouts and SmartArt diagrams when you need to show processes, hierarchies, or relationships. These visual frameworks often communicate more effectively than bullet points, especially in briefings where you’re competing for attention.

Close: Your design workflow

Let’s recap: design suggestions for layouts, content improvements for clarity, restructuring for logical flow, and visuals for engagement.

Start with your next rough draft—open Copilot and ask it to help you polish it. You’ll save hours and end up with a better presentation.

Sources & References

• Organize your presentation with Copilot in PowerPoint — Official guide for reorganizing and restructuring presentations with Copilot
• Add a slide or image with Copilot in PowerPoint — Guide for adding slides and images using Copilot in PowerPoint
• Microsoft 365 Copilot overview — Overview of Copilot capabilities including PowerPoint design features
• Microsoft Copilot adoption resources — Adoption resources and best practices for organizations