Keep your presentations on brand with Copilot in PowerPoint

Hello, Microsoft 365 Insiders! My name is Shea Tuli, and I am a Product Manager on the PowerPoint team. I am pleased to announce enhancements to PowerPoint template support when creating presentations with Copilot. By making a few updates to your template layouts, Copilot will offer more relevant suggestions and respect your brand choices.

 

NOTE: You can find and download the Copilot PowerPoint Starter Template by scrolling to the bottom of this blog and click the link.

Keep your presentations on brand with Copilot in PowerPoint

Branding in PowerPoint presentations and templates is crucial for several reasons:

• Professionalism and cohesion: A branded presentation reflects a cohesive visual identity, which signifies professionalism and attention to detail. This consistency helps reinforce your brand values and makes your presentation more polished and credible.
• Memorability: Using your brand’s colors, fonts, and logos helps create a lasting impression, making it easier for your audience to remember your message and associate it with your brand.
• Efficiency: Having a branded template saves time and effort. It enables you to update content without worrying about design consistency, allowing you to focus more on the message you want to convey.
• Brand recognition: Consistent use of branding elements across all presentations helps in building and reinforcing brand recognition. 

How It Works

Today, Copilot looks at the layouts and their names in your template to choose the best fit for slide content. Like other AI integrations, the content generated by Copilot can vary in length. For example, it might create four paragraphs for one slide and just one paragraph for another, depending on the slide’s intent.

Let’s review how variations in placeholder sizes, layout variety, and properly named layouts impact slides and presentations created using Copilot.

Placeholder size variety

One common issue is the lack of variety in placeholder sizes. For example, if your template only included small placeholders, the generated text might overflow or appear cluttered.

 

 

By including larger placeholders, you allow Copilot to format the text neatly, making your slide more readable and aesthetically pleasing.

Slide layout variety 

Challenges can also arise when your template only offers limited slide layout options. For example, if it only includes a title slide layout with a title, a subtitle, and an image placeholder, Copilot may generate a slide that has an unnecessary empty image placeholder.

 

 

 If Copilot had the option to use a text-only title slide layout, the resulting slide would be more appropriate.

 

 

This variety ensures that every slide layout aligns with the content, creating a more seamless and professional presentation.

Properly Named Layouts

Naming conventions help Copilot select and apply the most suitable layouts for your content. If layouts are improperly named, Copilot may choose the wrong one when generating a slide.

 

Label layouts with names that clearly indicate their purpose and usage. Copilot identifies key words in the layout names: Title, Agenda, Section, Content, and Conclusion.

 

 

NOTE: Layout name matching is currently supported for English and Japanese.

 

Tips and tricks

To optimize your template for Copilot, we recommend making the following changes:

• Provide layout and placeholder size variety: Offer multiple text placeholder sizes across layouts to accommodate different lengths and types of content.  Include a range of layouts for different content types, such as text-only slides and image and text slides. For simplicity, we could categorize our placeholder needs into five sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL) shown in red below.

 

NOTE: It is important that Copilot has at least one layout for each of the sizes but that doesn’t restrict your ability to design the slide. Examples of different branded slides below:

 

• Download the Copilot PowerPoint Starter Template: To help you optimize your template for use with Copilot, we have created and attached a starter template that follows best practices and includes recommended layouts. These layouts can be copied and pasted into your current template.

 

NOTE: For step-by-step instructions on updating your template, refer to this Help topic.

 

Requirements

• You must have a Copilot license. Learn more
• For organizational use, learn more here.
• For personal use, learn more here.

Availability

The starter template and features are available to all PowerPoint users across platforms who meet the above requirements.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT LANGUAGES:  Today, Copilot needs the layout names defined in the Slide Master view to be in either English or Japanese. But, if you work in other languages, you will still be able to use Copilot in PowerPoint with the English or Japanese layout names to create presentations in your preferred language. You can see the list of Copilot supported languages here: Supported languages for Microsoft Copilot - Microsoft Support

Feedback

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