Compound can build PowerPoint decks from your source documents and data. The agent lays out slides, writes headlines and bullets, generates charts from a linked workbook, and updates speaker notes — all from chat prompts. Every edit is versioned.

Draft a deck

Point the agent at the source material, describe the audience, and ask for the deck. The agent builds slides directly — no outline step first — so you iterate on the actual slides rather than a plan.

“Draft a 10-slide investor update from this memo and the Q3 workbook. Audience is the board. Lead with the headline numbers, then walk through segment performance, then guidance.”

Compound accepts .pptx and .ppt on upload; downloads are produced as .pptx.

Use a reference deck for your house style

Compound’s strongest workflow for decks is upload an existing deck as a reference and ask the agent to reuse its slides. Layouts, fonts, colors, and master slide structure stay intact — only the content changes. This is the most reliable way to get a deck that looks like yours on the first pass instead of one that needs hours of restyling.

A reference-deck prompt looks like this:

“Use the attached house_template.pptx as the reference. Pick the slides that best fit a Q3 board update — title slide, segment performance, KPI table, guidance — and replace the content with the numbers and narrative from this memo and the Q3 workbook. Keep the existing formatting and structure of each slide.”

The more specific you are about which reference slides to draw from, the closer the result will land. Telling the agent the role each slide plays in the story (“use slide 4’s two-column layout for the segment comparison”) works better than a generic “match the style.”

Edit slides

Once the deck exists, you can iterate by slide:

“Rewrite slide 3’s headline to lead with the EBITDA beat.”
“Move slide 7 to be the second slide.”
“Add a slide between 4 and 5 covering working-capital changes.”

For visual edits, ask in plain language: “Make the chart on slide 6 a bar chart instead of a line chart” or “Use a two-column layout on slide 9.”

Charts from a workbook

When the deck and a workbook live in the same Drive, the agent can build charts directly from cell ranges. Ask: “Add a chart on slide 4 showing the revenue waterfall from the Q3 workbook’s Summary sheet.”

The agent creates a native PowerPoint chart — editable directly in PowerPoint, no fragile OLE link back to the workbook. The tradeoff is that the chart is a snapshot of the workbook at the moment it’s built; if the workbook changes later, rerun the chart prompt and the agent will recreate the chart from the updated data.

Speaker notes

Ask the agent to generate speaker notes for every slide, or for specific ones. “Write speaker notes for slides 3-6 emphasizing the year-over-year story.” Notes are written into the slides’ notes field and exported with the deck.

Versions

Every edit creates a new version, so nothing the agent does is destructive — you can always roll back. Canvas View, the full slide editor, opens alongside the chat when the agent works on a deck; if you’ve closed it, click the file card in the chat to reopen. From Canvas View, click Versions to see and restore any prior state of the deck.

Export

Download the deck as .pptx. Shapes, charts, layouts, and speaker notes are preserved.

Presentations (PowerPoint)