Here’s a quick tip to boost your productivity by letting ChatGPT and VBA do the heavy lifting when creating PowerPoint slide decks.
If you don’t know what VBA is, no worries. It stands for Visual Basic for Applications and is integrated into all Microsoft Office applications, including PowerPoint. And no, you don’t have to be a programmer to make this work for you. Your existing copy/paste skills will do just fine…
Let me show you.
Here are the specific steps to take to boost your productivity when creating PowerPoint slide decks:
Visit ChatGPT and prompt it to write an outline for a PowerPoint presentation. Let’s pretend we want a pitch deck with maximum seven slides to present SmartPet Buddy, a fictitious robotic companion for pets.
The ChatGPT prompt could look like this:
You are an entrepreneur who invented SmartPet Buddy: A robotic companion for pets that offers interactive play, exercise, and monitoring, keeping pets entertained and active even when their owners are away. Real fun for your the whole family...including your best friends.
Write the outline for a slide deck to pitch this amazing product to prospective customers. Tell them about how exciting their lives will be with SmartPet Buddy in the house. Focus on the benefits more so than the features.
Tell your audience what the product does for them and what it means to them in their life rather than what it is by listing feature after feature.
Use no more than 7 slides in this deck.
ChatGPT will then produce the outline for this slide deck, just like we asked it to do.
If you like what ChatGPT presents to you, cool. Otherwise either hit the “Regenerate Response” button — or suggest what kind of modifications you want.
Once you are satisfied with the outline for your slide deck, it’s time to bring VBA into play. We are going to prompt ChatGPT to generate the required VBA code for PowerPoint from the outline:
Now write the VBA code to create the PowerPoint slides for this pitch. Add content that is humorous and whimsical to reflect just how fun the product is.
As always, ChatGPT, our skilled and willing digital assistant, will oblige and create a block of code for us. We can then copy this code and hop over to PowerPoint.
In PowerPoint, launch the Visual Basic Editor by pressing Alt-F11 or selecting Visual Basic Editor from the Tools/Macro menu.
Then, right click on the Project Panel and select Insert -> Module.
A new window will open. Paste the code you copied from ChatGPT into this window and then run the code by clicking on the ► icon.
And that’s it!
This piece of code has now created a new PowerPoint presentation with 7 slides with minimal text on each.
Now all that’s left is to make it pretty by using PowerPoint’s Designer feature:
The Designer is powered by AI as well and will read your slides and suggest a appropriate designs and images.
All you need to do is to select one of the designs you like. Then, fine-tune each slide to make sure your message will resonate with your audience — and voila… You have created a beautiful slide deck in no time.
In case you’re having trouble with the code, here is the snippet that worked for me:
Sub CreatePitchPresentation()
Dim PowerPointApp As Object
Dim Presentation As Object
Dim Slide As Object
' Open PowerPoint
Set PowerPointApp = CreateObject("PowerPoint.Application")
PowerPointApp.Visible = True
' Create a new presentation
Set Presentation = PowerPointApp.Presentations.Add
' Slide 1: Introduction
Set Slide = Presentation.Slides.Add(1, 11) ' ppLayoutTitleOnly
With Slide.Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "Welcome to SmartPet Buddy: Your Pet's New Best Friend!"
.Font.Size = 36
.Font.Bold = True
End With
' Slide 2: The Problem
Set Slide = Presentation.Slides.Add(2, 11) ' ppLayoutTitleOnly
With Slide.Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "The Problem"
.Font.Size = 28
.Font.Bold = True
End With
With Slide.Shapes(1).TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "Pets get bored. They become couch potatoes. And we know what happens when they become couch potatoes, right?"
.Font.Size = 20
End With
' Slide 3: The Solution: SmartPet Buddy
Set Slide = Presentation.Slides.Add(3, 11) ' ppLayoutTitleOnly
With Slide.Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "The Solution: SmartPet Buddy"
.Font.Size = 28
.Font.Bold = True
End With
With Slide.Shapes(1).TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "Introducing SmartPet Buddy: The robotic companion that will get your pets off the couch and bring joy to their lives!"
.Font.Size = 20
End With
' Slide 4: Benefits for Pet Owners
Set Slide = Presentation.Slides.Add(4, 11) ' ppLayoutTitleOnly
With Slide.Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "Benefits for Pet Owners"
.Font.Size = 28
.Font.Bold = True
End With
With Slide.Shapes(1).TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "Say goodbye to pet guilt and hello to peace of mind. SmartPet Buddy keeps your pets entertained, active, and out of trouble!"
.Font.Size = 20
End With
' Slide 5: Features Overview
Set Slide = Presentation.Slides.Add(5, 11) ' ppLayoutTitleOnly
With Slide.Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "Features Overview"
.Font.Size = 28
.Font.Bold = True
End With
With Slide.Shapes(1).TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "SmartPet Buddy offers interactive play, exercise, and real-time monitoring. It's like having a personal trainer and pet-sitter in one!"
.Font.Size = 20
End With
' Slide 6: Testimonials
Set Slide = Presentation.Slides.Add(6, 11) ' ppLayoutTitleOnly
With Slide.Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "Testimonials"
.Font.Size = 28
.Font.Bold = True
End With
With Slide.Shapes(1).TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "My cat has never been happier! SmartPet Buddy even taught her how to dance! - Mr. Whiskers"
.Font.Size = 20
End With
' Slide 7: Call to Action
Set Slide = Presentation.Slides.Add(7, 11) ' ppLayoutTitleOnly
With Slide.Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "Call to Action"
.Font.Size = 28
.Font.Bold = True
End With
With Slide.Shapes(1).TextFrame.TextRange
.Text = "Don't let your pets miss out on the fun! Visit our website and unleash the joy with SmartPet Buddy today!"
.Font.Size = 20
End With
End Sub
