I’ve been having a proper play with Copilot for presentations lately, trying to work out whether it can genuinely save small business owners time when building a deck. Short answer: it depends. Longer answer: it depends on where you open it, and even then, results can shift from one day to the next.
Why I decided to test this properly
I’d used Copilot to build presentations before, and the results were a bit hit and miss. Rather than just shrug and move on, I wanted to test it properly, side by side, so I could tell you something useful rather than just “your mileage may vary”.
Before recording anything, I ran a quiet practice test using a different topic (Microsoft Loop, if you’re curious). I wanted to know roughly what to expect before I was on camera, because nobody wants surprises mid-recording. Turns out, that was a good call — more on that below.
The setup
I used my included Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, currently called Copilot Basic. It comes with most business M365 plans, so this isn’t some premium extra — it’s what a lot of small business owners already have sitting there, unused.
I gave Copilot one simple prompt, and tried it in two different places: Copilot on the web (copilot.microsoft.com), and Copilot built into PowerPoint itself. Same words, same account, same day.
The prompt I used: “Create a presentation explaining cyber security basics to small business owners who are new to it. Include a title slide, an overview of what it is, 3 key benefits, and a simple next-steps slide.”
Copy that and try it yourself if you fancy it — half the ‘fun’ is seeing what you get.
What Copilot on the web gave me
Copilot on the web didn’t ask me a single question. It just got on with things quietly in the background, then told me it had created a presentation.
Handy, except it didn’t actually give me a link to open it. This has happened to me before, so I knew to just ask for it. Once I nudged it, the full address was displayed, though not a clickable link. Easy enough to copy and paste it into a new browser tab to open the deck up.
The result was ten slides. Reasonable content, though the colours weren’t really “me” — nothing a bit of editing wouldn’t fix. Interestingly, this was actually better than my earlier practice run with the same tool, which had come out much thinner and more generic. Same tool, same prompt, different time, different result. That inconsistency turned out to be the real story.
What Copilot in PowerPoint gave me
PowerPoint took a different approach entirely. Before doing anything, it stopped and asked me how I wanted the deck to look and feel. I picked “warm and confident” from the options it offered.
Then it got to work — and by “got to work,” I mean it took a good ten minutes. If you’re thinking of trying this, please don’t leave it until five minutes before a meeting, learnt that one the hard way myself. Fortunately, always testing rather than with a deadline.
The result was four slides. Fewer than the web version, but tighter, and it stuck a little closer to what I’d actually asked for.
A quick aside on accounts
While I was testing all this, I also tried the exact same prompt in Copilot on the web, but signed into my personal Microsoft account rather than my business one. It didn’t build a deck at all — it gave me a text outline instead, and asked if I wanted it turned into slides.
Same tool, same prompt, completely different behaviour, purely because of which account I was signed into. That was the moment I realised this isn’t really a “web versus PowerPoint” story. It’s a “Copilot isn’t one consistent thing” story.
So which one’s better?
Genuinely, I can’t give you a neat answer, and I don’t think that’s a cop-out. Copilot’s output can vary between the exact same tool on different days, let alone between different versions of it, or different accounts entirely. It’s also going to depend on how much you’ve already used it. How much Copilot knows about you, your style and your business.
What I can tell you is this: don’t judge Copilot on one go. If it disappoints you once, try a different entry point before writing it off completely, and always expect to spend some time editing afterwards, whichever route you take.
Try it yourself
This is why I’ve shared the prompt above. Run it in Copilot on the web, then in Copilot inside PowerPoint, and see what you get. You might land somewhere similar to me, or somewhere completely different, and that’s rather the point.
Either way, you’ll come away knowing more about what Copilot can (and can’t) reliably do for your presentations — which is worth a lot more than any “top 10 Copilot tips” post promising it’ll be magic every single time.
Created with the help of Claude AI from an original transcript.
YouTube Videos
I Asked Copilot to Build the Same Presentation Twice — Here’s What Happened
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