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PowerPointIntermediate~45 min practiceLesson 18 of 20

Draft with Copilot and check the facts

Give Copilot the brief, then compare its slides with the source figures.

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In this lesson

Make a six-slide draft from the supplied brief and check its claims, using Copilot or a manual outline.

Practice material

Start with the practice file. Open the worked answer after trying the exercise. CSV and text briefs are also available. All resources and import notes →

Example

A support-review brief

Brief: audience leadership; time ten minutes; monthly tickets Jul 1,240, Aug 1,610, Sep 1,180, Oct 1,050; observed peak August; proposed next step a four-week weekend rota pilot; pilot owner Dana; no measured savings, staffing costs or causal explanation supplied. Required structure: context, evidence, interpretation limits, proposed pilot, measurement plan, decision. The presentation-brief download is optional; this complete inline version is sufficient.

How it works

Tell Copilot who the presentation is for, what facts it can use and what you want it to produce. Then read the titles, charts and notes against the brief. A polished slide can still contain the wrong value or a claim the source never made.

Copilot menus, create-from-file options and Agent Mode depend on your account, version and rollout. If an option is missing, use the inline brief or make the outline yourself. You still need to check the facts in either workflow.

Steps

  1. Create a new practice presentation from an available theme or approved template. Copy the complete inline brief into a separate review note so you can compare every generated claim with the original.

  2. If your licensed PowerPoint offers Copilot, open its pane and choose the available create-presentation or Agent Mode workflow. Paste the brief as text; do not assume that a Markdown download can be attached in every workflow.

  3. Request exactly six slides using context, evidence, limits, pilot, measurement and decision. Instruct it to keep the four monthly values unchanged and label the rota as proposed, not approved.

  4. Review the outline before generating slides if your interface allows it. Remove customer quotes, budget figures, savings percentages or explanations that are not in the brief. Ask for a revised outline with those additions removed.

  5. Generate or manually build the slides. Inspect chart source data and all speaker notes; replace a chart screenshot with editable data when practical and distinguish an AI-generated illustration from documentary evidence.

  6. Run Accessibility Checker and compare each title with the brief. Make a review table with Source fact, Slide claim and Decision columns. Keep supported facts, label hypotheses and leave proposed actions marked as proposed.

Try it yourself

  1. Audit this deliberately flawed sentence: Our help hub cut support costs by 35 percent, so expand the team immediately. Identify both the unsupported cost claim and the unexplained recommendation.
  2. Replace it with a defensible statement based on the supplied data, then compute the actual August-to-October ticket decline. Record which denominator you used when expressing it as a percentage.
Show expected result
  • Acceptable replacement: Tickets fell from 1,610 in August to 1,050 in October; causes and cost impact remain unverified.
  • The decline is 560 tickets, approximately 34.8% of August. It is not a measured 35% cost saving.

If something goes wrong

The Copilot control or a file-reference option is absent.
Check your subscription and your organisation’s settings. If the option is still missing, paste the practice brief into an available text workflow or build the six-slide outline manually.
The chart looks plausible but contains a different October value.
Open the chart data and restore Oct 1,050. Recalculate the decline, then check the title and speaker notes for numbers that also need correcting.

Quick check

Try these questions after the exercise. Check the result in your app before marking the lesson complete.

1. Is a 34.8% ticket fall the same as a cost saving?
2. What should happen when AI invents a customer quote?
3. What is the fallback when Copilot is unavailable?

Choose an answer for all 3 questions to check your understanding.

Optional: try it with Copilot

If you have Copilot, try this after the exercise. Keep the original file and compare its suggestions with your own result.

Create a six-slide ten-minute leadership review from this brief: Jul 1240, Aug 1610, Sep 1180, Oct 1050 tickets; Dana proposes a four-week weekend rota pilot. Separate facts, hypotheses and decisions. Do not invent savings, costs or causes.

More from Microsoft

These Microsoft guides cover the tools used in this lesson.

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