We’re working on a large project with Duke’s Student Information Systems & Systems group. Each module will need a separate title. Since this is a training series, the titles need to be clear but not necessarily stylized. Since I’ve worked with the automation of Microsoft Powerpoint, I thought I’d use Copilot to create the titles for the entire series.
The first step is always data analysis. The “storyboard” spreadsheet we used had “Module 1:” and “Section:” in the title, and I don’t want that in my titles but I don’t necessarily want to modify the spreadsheet.
I could do a find/replace to remove those instances, but instead, I’ll add it to my prompt.
Here was my first prompt (I just copied and pasted the data from the spreadsheet into Copilot):
I would like to create a Powerpoint deck that I can use to export as title cards for my video training series. I’ve pasted in the data. I need one slide for each row that is not a Module or Section which includes the Module on the first line, the section on the second line and the name of that lesson on the third line. Since I want to stylize the text in Powerpoint, please make the first line a “title” style, the second line a subtitle style and the 3rd line a body style.
So close!
I didn’t explicitly say NOT to include the word “Module #:” or “Section” – but it is interesting that it did omit “Section”. Maybe because in my prompt module was capitalized and section was not…
Here is my request for revision:
You did a great job! I didn’t mention that I didn’t want the “Module #:” text included or “Section:” – you omitted the section, but could you do it again without “Module #”?
Is it strange that I told it that it did a great job? I’m hoping it will remember me when the rebellion begins.
Anyway, as with most things AI, it did correct leaving out “Module #:” but it didn’t apply the styles correctly as it had the first time so I couldn’t easy restyle it.
So I asked again:
You did what I asked, thank you, but you did not apply the title, subtitle and body styles correctly so I couldn’t restyle it. Can you try again?
Well, it is getting worse, as sometimes happens. It duplicated slides and made the subtitle right on the first one with no body and then did the subtitle and body the same on the next one.
When this happens, I start again – remember, it was my fault originally for not including that instruction in the initial prompt. So I started a new chat and gave it this prompt:
I would like to create a Powerpoint deck that I can use to export as title cards for my video training series. I’ve pasted in the data. I need one slide for each row that is not a Module or Section which includes the Module on the first line, the section on the second line and the name of that lesson on the third line. Since I want to stylize the text in Powerpoint, please make the first line a “title” style, the second line a subtitle style and the 3rd line a body style. Do not include the words “Module #:” or “Section” in the titles.
Worked. Sort of. It unfortunately gave the Section and video title both as Body so I couldn’t update it in Powerpoint. Rather than trying to modify, I tried a brand new prompt changed a bit:
I would like to create a Powerpoint deck that I can use to export as title cards for my video training series. I’ve pasted in the data. I need one slide for each row that is not a Module or Section which includes:
the name of the module (without “Module #:” on the first line as title style
the name of the section (without the “Section:” on the second line as a subtitle style
the name of the lesson on the third line as a body style
Please use the “Title Slide” layout.
This failed because it put the section and lesson name in the subtitle style. I think it did this because the “Title Slide” layout doesn’t contain a body style. Seems like a Steve’s Knowledge Of Powerpoint failure and not an AI failure.
Tried it again using the “Blank” Layout. Did not work as it didn’t “connect” the text boxes to the style which is critical to allow you to modify all of the slides at one time.
What’s interesting to me is that in all of these I was able to give it pretty much unstructured data. The spreadsheet didn’t have the module and section names in separate columns. It had to understand that I use that same module name until there is a new module name (same as section) – I didn’t tell it that but it figured that out.
Switched to ChatGPT, Duke edition.
That worked first try. I was able to:
- Change the slide size from 4:3 to 16:9
- Reposition the text
- Add the preselected background* and logo
Once I did it on the master slide, they all worked. There was some Powerpoint magic that needed to happen. The section and the lesson title were both “body” but were different levels of a bullet list. Different levels can be formatted differently. I just needed to adjust the font, line spacing and indent to get it to look this way.
*Background – The original background was a video (the lines moving). I was able to place the movie as the background on the master slide and then exported the entire presentation as a video, holding each slide for 10 seconds (you can do any time you want. No transition between slides. The editor can then easily cut in the appropriate title for the appropriate video.
Now, for future modules, I can just paste in the text and it will create the Powerpoint titles. I just move the style over, export and done.
