The Board Report That Rebuilds Itself_Copilot in PowerPoint, by Felix Irondo, CPA on YouTube. 8 min 48 s.
- Video length
- 8 min 48 s
- Time to do it
- 45 minutes
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Steps
- 10
What you need
Steps
Clean your Excel workbook before opening PowerPoint. Give each data range a clear sheet name, such as Sales_Report, GL_Extract, Budget and Collections_Extract, so Copilot knows which numbers to use.
Add an Account_Mapping sheet that groups each expense account into a reporting line. Add a KPI_Summary or MIS_PnL sheet holding the five headline numbers you want the report to match.
Open your presentation in PowerPoint and click the Copilot button on the ribbon to open the Copilot pane.
Pick the Create interactive slide skill in the Copilot pane. A skill is a saved prompt that tells Copilot exactly what to build.
Paste your first prompt. Name the file, the quarter and its months, and which sheet feeds each figure. Ask for five cards: Volume, Revenue, EBITDA, PBT and Cash Collection, each showing actual, budget and last year with variance.
In the same prompt, describe the detail view for each card, such as top ten customers for Revenue and a budget-to-actual bridge for PBT. Tell Copilot to say so if a figure cannot be worked out and not to make it up.
Run a second prompt to make it board-ready. Ask for one line of context under each headline number, chart titles that state what happened, and data labels on the bars instead of a legend.
Check every number against your KPI_Summary sheet. Fix any mismatch by editing the prompt or the source sheet, then run it again.
Save both prompts as a Copilot skill so you can reuse them. Give the skill a clear name, such as Quarterly board report.
Share the skill with your team from the skill menu, then next quarter run it with one line naming the new quarter and file.
Tips and common mistakes
Keep one sheet per data source and avoid merged cells, since Copilot reads the raw ranges.
Always state the quarter months in the prompt, for example Q3 is July to September, to stop Copilot guessing the period.
Ask Copilot to flag anything it cannot calculate rather than fill the gap, then check those cells yourself.
Test the clickable cards in slideshow mode before sending the deck to the board.
Questions
Do I need a Copilot licence to do this?
Yes. You need Microsoft 365 Copilot in PowerPoint, and your organisation must allow saving and sharing Copilot skills.
Can Copilot pull numbers straight from my Excel file?
Yes, when the workbook is attached or referenced and the sheets are clearly named. It works best when headline figures sit in one summary sheet and detail comes from raw sheets.
What if Copilot shows a wrong number?
Check the sheet name and range in your prompt, confirm the figure in your KPI_Summary sheet, and rerun the prompt after fixing the source data.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
