Blank slide, three tabs open, meeting in ten minutes. It turns a pile of scattered notes into a slide-ready outline before your coffee gets cold.
| Bullet limit | 7 words per line (7-7-7 rule) |
|---|---|
| Slide cap example | 6 slides for an 8 minute pitch |
| Top prompt technique | Being clear and direct (Anthropic) |
| Copilot feature | PowerPoint Copilot builds slides with speaker notes from a Word file |
1. Dump everything in one place
Open a blank document and paste in every scrap you have: the email thread, the voice note transcript, the half written doc, the spreadsheet notes. Do not organise it, just collect it. For example, paste a client’s WhatsApp voice note transcript, a pricing sheet, and old meeting notes into one block of text.
2. Ask for a slide outline, not a summary
Tell the AI exactly what shape you want: ‘Turn this into a slide outline. One idea per slide. For each slide give me a headline of 6 words or less, 3 bullets, and one line of speaker notes.’ This forces structure instead of a wall of text.
3. Set the size limit upfront
Tell the AI how much room you actually have: ‘This is for an 8 minute pitch, so give me no more than 6 slides.’ A size limit forces it to choose what matters, which is the hard part you were avoiding.
4. Keep the judgment calls for yourself
Read the outline and move anything the AI got wrong about priority. It does not know that your client complained about support speed last quarter, or that your boss hates slides that open with price. You know that. Reorder slides, cut one, swap a headline.
5. Paste headlines first, bullets second
In your slide tool, create every slide with just the headline first, so you see the spine of the whole pitch before you add any detail. Then go back and drop in the bullets and notes slide by slide.
A worked example
A sales manager has a client renewal call in 20 minutes, with only a messy voice note transcript, a pricing sheet, and a half written email as source material.
Before
renewal date is nov 15. client complained about response time twice last month. new pricing is up 8% but we are adding a priority support tier free for year one. competitor X quoted 12% less but no SLA. client wants to see value not just price. uptime is 99.9%. two feature releases they asked for are shipping in January. march QBR notes said support speed was their top priority.
After
Slide 1 – Your Renewal, Simplified: what’s changing, what’s not, decision needed by Nov 15. Note: open warm, do not lead with price. Slide 2 – You Asked, We Shipped: priority support free for year one, two releases shipping January, directly answers the March QBR ask. Note: say ‘you told us speed mattered, here is what we did.’ Slide 3 – Reliability You Can Count On: 99.9% uptime, priority tier included. Note: keep this short, it is proof not the pitch. Slide 4 – The Investment: 8% increase, priority support included at no extra cost, frame against total value. Note: only mention the competitor if they bring it up first. Slide 5 – Next Steps: renew by Nov 15, schedule a check in 30 days after. Note: ask for their decision date out loud before the call ends.
Three ways to bend it
For a content writer pitching a campaign
Feed it your scattered campaign notes, past engagement numbers, and client brief. Ask for a 5 slide outline for a client pitch, headline plus bullets plus one speaker note each, so you walk in with a structure instead of a 3 page document nobody will read.
For a financial analyst briefing leadership
Paste your raw analysis notes and the numbers you pulled this week. Ask for a board-ready outline capped at 4 slides, one number per slide maximum, so leadership sees the conclusion first and the backup data second, not the other way round.
For a support lead presenting ticket trends
Paste a week of ticket summaries or call notes. Ask for a slide outline grouped by theme, one theme per slide, so a messy pile of complaints becomes a clear retro deck your team can actually discuss.
When it goes wrong
The outline is still packed with too many words per bullet.
Give it a hard limit in the instruction, like ‘max 8 words per bullet,’ and repeat the limit if it drifts back on a later slide.
It leads with the wrong slide and buries the one that actually matters.
That is normal, it does not know your audience. Just drag that slide to the front yourself, this is the one step only you can do well.
The speaker notes are too generic to actually say out loud.
Ask it to write the note as the first sentence you would say, not a description of the slide. Ask for ‘what I would actually say first’ instead of ‘notes.’
When not to use this
Skip this if the deck already exists in near final form, or if the real work is design and data visualisation rather than structure, since this method only builds the skeleton. It is also the wrong move for a strategically sensitive pitch where you should think the narrative through yourself first, then use AI to tidy the structure after, not before.
What you can now do
You can go from scattered notes to a presentable slide outline in minutes instead of staring at a blank deck.
Part of Making Life Easier With AI, a weekly walk-through of one small thing AI can take off your plate.
Take this further
Act as a blunt hiring manager who has read ten thousand resumes, not a career coach. I will paste my full resume and the job description I want. Rewrite the whole resume for that role, section by section, in this order: summary, experience, skills, education. Rules: every experience line leads with impact, not duty. Use bracketed placeholders like [8 percent] for any number I did not give you, and list at the end every placeholder I need to replace with a real figure. Keep it to one page of text. Plain formatting only, no tables or columns, so screening software can parse it. After the rewrite, tell me the three weakest claims that need evidence before I send this anywhere. My resume: [paste resume]. The role: [paste job description].
Takeaways
- Paste every piece of raw material (emails, transcripts, pricing sheets) into one document unsorted before you prompt, so the AI sees everything at once.
- Specify the exact slide format you want in your first prompt (headline, 3 bullets, 1 speaker note line) plus a slide count tied to your actual time limit.
- Set a hard word cap per bullet, around 7 words per the 7-7-7 rule, in your instruction, and repeat that cap if later slides drift back to dense text.
- Ask for speaker notes as the first sentence you would actually say instead of notes, so they read as something you could speak aloud.
- Paste only the headlines into your slide tool first to check the pitch’s overall structure before filling in bullets and notes slide by slide.
Questions people actually ask
How do I get AI to turn my messy notes into a slide deck?
Paste every scrap of raw material (emails, transcripts, spreadsheets) into one document without organizing it first. Then ask explicitly for a slide outline, not a summary, specifying headline, bullets, and speaker notes for each slide plus a slide count tied to your time limit. Review the draft yourself and reorder anything the AI got wrong about priority.
How many slides should I plan for a short pitch?
There’s no fixed formula, but a useful starting point is roughly one slide per one to two minutes of talking time, so an eight minute pitch lands around five to six slides. Setting that cap before you draft forces whoever writes the outline, human or AI, to choose what actually matters instead of cramming in everything you know.
How many words should go on each slide or bullet?
A common guideline is the 7-7-7 rule: no more than seven lines per slide and no more than seven words per line, capping a slide around forty to fifty words total. When prompting AI for an outline, state a specific number such as max seven words per bullet, and repeat that limit on later slides if the draft drifts back toward dense paragraphs.
Can AI write usable speaker notes, not just slide bullets?
Yes, but the phrasing of your request matters. Asking for notes tends to produce a bland description of what the slide shows. Instead ask the AI for the literal first sentence you would say out loud when that slide appears, which produces a usable script opener rather than a summary you would never actually speak in the room.
Should I trust AI with a high stakes client pitch?
Use it for structure, not for strategy on anything sensitive. Work out the narrative and the key judgment calls yourself first, since AI does not know your client’s history or what your audience actually cares about. Bring AI in afterward to tidy the outline into slides, rather than letting it decide what the pitch should say first.
Sources
- Prompting best practicesAnthropic
- Prepare your presentation with Microsoft CopilotMicrosoft Support
- The 7-7-7 Rule in PowerPoint: Create Slides That EngageSlideUpLift
What happens next
Expect AI slide tools built into PowerPoint Copilot and similar products to keep pulling outline generation and speaker notes into a single step, narrowing the gap between a prompt and a near final deck. Worth watching whether these tools start handling design and data visualization too, since outline generation and visual polish are still largely separate passes today.
