Turn a document into a deck

A deck is not a document with line breaks. This is how to get one that survives being presented.

1. Give it the source and the audience

Attach the report, or work in the task that already holds it, and ask:

Turn the attached report into a ten-slide deck for the board. They care about the decision, not the method.

Slide count is the single most useful constraint you can give. Without it you get whatever length the material suggests, which is usually too long.

2. Fix the outline before it writes

The assistant builds the outline first — every slide title, in order — then fills the slides out one at a time. Watch the outline appear and intervene there:

Merge slides 4 and 5, drop the methodology slide, and add one at the end with the three asks.

Changing an outline costs nothing. Changing ten written slides costs a rewrite of each.

3. Set the tone with a theme

Themes control colour, type and shape across the whole deck; content is untouched, so restyling is always safe.

Something more sober — dark, serif, less colour.

Try two or three. It takes seconds and it is the cheapest way to make a deck look like it was made by your organisation rather than by a tool.

4. Add pictures only where they carry weight

Ask for an image on a specific slide:

Give slide 2 a full-bleed image of the new warehouse floor.

The slide’s layout has to have a media slot for this to work — say what you want and the assistant switches the layout for you. Do not illustrate every slide; a deck with three deliberate images reads better than one with ten decorative ones.

5. Speaker notes, if you want them

Notes are not written by default. Ask:

Add speaker notes to each slide — two sentences, what I should say, not what is on the slide.

6. Finish it where your audience expects

Export to PowerPoint (.pptx), images included. Most boards want the file, not a link.

Working slide by slide

Once the deck exists, edit narrowly. “Slide 4 needs the growth chart and one fewer bullet” gets a precise change; “redo the deck” rolls the dice on the nine slides that were already fine.

Next

• Slide decks — layouts, themes, and every deck tool
• Image generation — getting the picture you actually wanted