Use Copilot in PowerPoint to draft a strategy deck from your approved outline

What This Does

A strategy deck is mostly approved content arranged in the firm's template. Copilot in PowerPoint can build the first draft of that arrangement from an outline you write, so you spend your time on the check rather than the layout. The risk runs one way: a deck builder wants to fill gaps with figures and confident claims. This guide keeps every figure as a placeholder, tells Copilot to add nothing, and gives you a slide-by-slide check for anything it invented.

The deck is a draft. It goes through your CCO's marketing review before anyone outside the firm sees it.

Before You Start

• PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 with Copilot. Microsoft's help page says Copilot might not be included in your Microsoft 365 subscription or might be unavailable under your organization's settings. Look for the Copilot icon at the bottom-right corner of the PowerPoint window, and use the page's "Learn which Copilot license you have" link or ask IT if it is missing. Plan and price details are on Microsoft's own pages.
• An outline of approved content for your strategy, in text. Use the firm's approved descriptions, or placeholders where the approved text lives in your answer library.
• Your firm's template or Brand Kit, if your organization uses one.
• A word with your CCO about which AI tools the firm approved and how chats are kept. Check your organization's Copilot data settings too.

Data caution. The outline holds approved text and placeholders only. Material non-public information never goes into an AI tool. Undisclosed holdings, trade ideas, models, investor and client names, account numbers, fee terms and consultant scores stay in the firm's systems unless the firm approved Copilot for that data and your CCO allows it. Figures from a licensed terminal or data provider need a licence check before they go into a file Copilot reads. Placeholders such as "[figure from the firm's systems]" are the default here, and you fill them by hand.

Steps

1. Write the outline with placeholders

In a text file or a Word document, write the outline. Every figure is a placeholder. For the invented Strategy S:

Strategy S (invented example)
1. Strategy overview: [approved strategy description from the answer library]
2. Investment process: [approved process text]. Research, thesis review and portfolio construction as the approved text describes them.
3. Team: [roles and biographies from the approved team page]
4. Risk management: [approved risk management text]. Position and sector limits: [limits from the strategy guidelines]
5. Portfolio characteristics: number of holdings [figure from the firm's systems, as-of date]; top sector weight [figure from the firm's systems, as-of date]
6. Closing slide: [closing text approved by the CCO]

The bracketed text is deliberate. Copilot should carry each bracket through to the slide.

2. Start a new presentation and open Copilot

Start a new presentation in PowerPoint. Open Copilot Chat with the Copilot icon at the bottom-right corner of the screen. Microsoft's page shows a model selector, which you can leave on Auto. If your organization requires a Brand Kit, choose it in Select brand, and it appears attached to the prompt box.

3. Describe the deck

Microsoft's page describes this creation path: describe the presentation in the prompt box. The page's help list also asks how to create a presentation from a file, but the steps it shows are the prompt path, so this guide uses the prompt. Paste your outline into the prompt like this:

Create a presentation for an internal review draft of Strategy S, based only on the outline below. Use one slide per numbered item. Keep every bracketed placeholder exactly as written. Do not add figures, statistics, comparisons, rankings, projections, performance statements, charts with data or any claim that is not in the outline. Do not fill in a placeholder.

[paste the outline here]

4. Answer the clarifying questions

Microsoft's page says Copilot may ask who the audience is, how long the deck should be, which template or design direction to use and what imagery to include. Answer with: audience internal reviewers (you and the CCO), one slide per outline item, firm template, no imagery that contains data. You can also skip the questions and let Copilot decide, but then check the result harder.

5. Check every slide

When Copilot finishes, read every slide and its speaker notes. For each one, look for:

• Any digit that is not inside one of your brackets
• Any comparison, ranking or trend ("leading", "consistent", "proven", "best")
• Any statement about results, expected results or what the strategy "delivers"
• A placeholder that was replaced with a number or rephrased text
• A slide you did not ask for

Delete or rewrite anything that was not in your outline. Then fill the placeholders by hand from the firm's systems, with the as-of date next to each figure.

6. Send it for review

Send the deck to your CCO through your firm's marketing review process. Nobody outside the firm sees it before that review finishes.

Real Example

Scenario: An investment consultant asked for a short strategy presentation. You have the approved text in your answer library and want a draft deck before you spend an hour in the template.

What you do: Paste the outline above into the prompt from step 3.

What you get: A draft with a title slide and one slide per outline item, in the firm's template. The Team slide may add invented job titles. The Portfolio characteristics slide may try to be helpful with a sample number or a small chart. Delete those. The Risk management slide may add a sentence describing the approach as "disciplined" or "rigorous". Delete that too unless it appears in the approved text. What remains is your outline in the firm's design, with every figure still a bracket.

Tips

• Treat the outline as the master copy. After Copilot builds the deck, compare each slide with it and look for text the outline never contained.
• Ask Copilot to rewrite wording on one slide if the approved text reads awkwardly on a slide, but keep the approved meaning. A reworded sentence can drift, so show the CCO the wording change.
• Keep a copy of the outline with the deck. If someone asks where a sentence came from, the outline is the source.
• Copilot formats and arranges. It does not decide what the strategy claims, and it does not know the firm's approved language unless you give it.

Tool interfaces change. If the Copilot icon has moved, look for a Copilot button near the bottom-right corner of PowerPoint.