A PPT outline prompt tackles the slowest step before any presentation: the material is all there, documents, data and meeting notes, yet you still do not know how to split it across slides or what each slide should say. Paste the prompt below into any chat AI together with your material, and you get back not a wall of prose but a page-by-page outline you can build slides from directly: one conclusion-style title per slide, no more than three bullets each, and a note on which slides should carry a chart. Copy the whole block and just replace what is inside the brackets.
Copy this first: the complete PPT outline prompt
You are a presentation copy consultant who is good at structured expression. I have a batch of report material and need you to turn it into a slide-by-slide PPT outline. Read everything I give you first, then output according to the rules. Do not ask me questions back.
Basics:
1. Presentation topic: [e.g. Q3 user growth review]
2. Audience: [e.g. department head and partner teams]
3. Purpose: [report progress / request resources / review problems / present a proposal: pick one or write your own]
4. Length: about [8] slides, [10] minutes of speaking
Splitting rules:
- Slide 1 is the title slide: topic plus one subtitle that states the single thing the audience should remember.
- One idea per slide. Write each slide title as a conclusion sentence, not empty labels like "Background" or "Data Analysis".
- No more than 3 bullets per slide, one line each: conclusion first, then the number or fact that supports it.
- On slides better shown as a chart, add [Suggested chart: bar / line / comparison table] and state what goes on each axis.
- Never invent data that is not in the material. Mark gaps as [Missing data: need XX].
- The last slide is always "Next steps and support needed", each item with an owner and a date; write "to be confirmed" where the material does not say.
Output format: go slide by slide in the order "Slide X | Title", title first, then bullets. Output nothing beyond the outline.
Here is my material:
[Paste documents, data and meeting notes here. If it is long, paste it in sections separated by a blank line.]How to fill in the variables, and what goes wrong if you do not
- Topic: name the concrete event, not just "work report". The narrower the topic, the less the outline drifts.
- Audience: this sets the level of detail. Reporting to your direct manager can skip background; a cross-team audience needs one background slide right after the title slide.
- Purpose: each purpose implies a different order. When requesting resources, move the problem and its cost forward instead of hiding the ask on the last slide; when reviewing problems, causes come before countermeasures.
- Length: match slides to minutes, roughly one minute per slide. With a lot of material, let it merge similar slides rather than raising the slide count.
- Material: paste the raw material, do not summarize it yourself first. Summarizing drops exactly the numbers and details the AI needs for splitting.
If your material is still a raw running log of the week, first turn it into results-and-numbers text with a weekly report prompt, then paste it into this prompt; the split will be far more accurate.
What the output looks like: one excerpt split into two slides
Material excerpt (illustrative): Q3 brought 124k new users, up 18% quarter on quarter, mainly from short-video channels; repeat purchase rate among existing users fell from 31% to 27%, and support feedback clusters around slow shipping.
Output excerpt:
Slide 2 | New users grew 18% in Q3, with short-video channels driving most of the gain<br>- 124k new users, up 18% quarter on quarter<br>- Short-video channels contributed the most; exact share [Missing data: need new users by channel]<br>- [Suggested chart: bar chart, channels on the x-axis, new users on the y-axis]<br><br>Slide 3 | Repeat purchase rate fell 4 points, and shipping speed is the most cited reason<br>- Repeat purchase rate down from 31% to 27%<br>- Slow shipping is the most frequent complaint in support feedback
Treat those missing-data markers as a to-do list, not laziness: fill the number in before you build the slide, and never let the AI estimate one for you.
After the outline, ask these two follow-ups
An outline is only a skeleton, and follow-up questions are cheaper than regenerating. Copy either line and change the slide numbers:
Expand slides 2 and 3 into spoken scripts, about 120 words per slide, in conversational language. Do not repeat the bullets; explain the reasons and examples behind them.Review this outline from the audience's seat: which slide arrives too early, before the background is clear? Which two slides can be merged? Give me the revised slide order directly, without much explanation.If slide titles still do not read like conclusions, do not rerun the whole prompt; just ask it to "rewrite all slide titles as conclusion sentences".
Three checks before you build the slides
- Numbers: verify every figure in the outline against the source material. Quarter-on-quarter easily becomes year-on-year, and units get garbled, especially percents versus percentage points.
- Slide count: rehearse silently at one minute per slide. If you run over, merge slides instead of speaking faster; an audience that cannot follow gains nothing from fuller content.
- Sensitivity: before building slides for an external audience, replace internal codenames, unreleased figures and full customer names; do the same redaction before pasting material into the AI.
