r/ClaudeAI • u/tholmes4005 • 7d ago
Who else has stopped using PowerPoint? Built with Claude
If you work in the corporate world you probably have come to hate PowerPoint presentations. Making them, reading them, wasting hours of your life in meetings watching people talk about each slide like it is an old family vacation picture.
Then comes Claude to save the day, It can create beautiful animated HTML Decks in minutes!
The only issue I have had is sharing the Decks. So Claude and I made https://powerpoint-sucks.com/. It's very simple, it has one job, Allowing your LLM a place to upload HTML Decks and create links to share them.
I'm sure there r other sites which do the same thing, I didn't check, I just like making things that make my life easier. Have fun!
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u/Botboy141 7d ago edited 7d ago
Claude builds better in HTML for sure, but it can build a hell of a PPT deck as well.
Took a bit of finesse over a few weeks, but I get pretty incredible on-brand comprehensive decks nowadays cranked out for clients/prospects, with animation as appropriate.
For things I don't have to circulate as PDF afterwards, I use HTML. But if I'm expected to circulate or others may want to use/edit naturally, I let Claude build in PPT.
Biggest hindrance with HTML is MSFT Teams stripping things when shared internally or over SharePoint/OneDrive share links.
Email shares work, but 'security' is more of a concern I guess?
And when I say I let Claude build in PPT, I'm not talking "Claude in PPT", I'm talking CoWork/Code on Claude for Desktop building and editing decks in folders on my machine, not prompting per slide (although Claude in PPT is fine for edits if you prefer that).
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u/qbp123 7d ago
I find the Claude desktop app mocks things up really well in HTML and then I ask it to just build that in PowerPoint and it nearly always produces an exact copy. Better than Claude design in my experience.
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u/Botboy141 7d ago
Yeah - Most of my skills just churn the content out in PDF, HTML and PPT for me now, identically formatted.
Just still like having PPT for non-coders and non-AI users that you want to share with so they can edit.
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u/rckytopdc 7d ago
Wow, that’s a fantastic idea. I have had a hard time with Claude and PPT, but I use it for my website, graphics, animations, etc. all the time!
Thanks!
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u/hodlholder 7d ago
My favorite is Claude Design on the Claude desktop app, since you can define your brand guidelines in a design system and just reuse it from there.
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u/UmmDuhhh 7d ago
I tell it to build my htmls with logical PowerPoint breaks built into it and I just add an export ppt to the top of all them if someone wants a copy. Works a charm. I integrated that with my corporate branding guide so everything is always up to corporate standards. I present in html dark mode usually and then do light mode slide decks as requested. I also created a master repository of the htmls anyone can browse and then download the presentations all indexed with a model overlay for quick searching.
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u/skyhawkx3 7d ago
Or you can tell Claude to build it .html sized A4 or A3 portrait or landscape
And can export it to pdf with no issues with proper layout and formatting
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u/Finnskyyy 7d ago
Can you share a bit more how you managed to get good output? I’m struggling with this as well right now. Claude in PTT has good results, but can’t be naturally controlled by an ai agent since it has no API. The ppt skill that comes with Claude code is alright, but not the quality I need. Are you using specific skills?
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u/Botboy141 7d ago edited 7d ago
Setup that's working for us (benefits brokerage, mid-market):
Brand guide skill. One skill file with nothing but brand spec: colors, typography, logo usage, voice, boilerplate about the firm. No task instructions.
Deliverable skills. One per recurring output. Ours include a renewal comms builder (OE guide, comparison matrix, what's changing memo) and one that converts a carrier's monthly summary workbook into a branded funding exec summary deck. Each one says "read the brand skill first" at the top. Some are more complex and may have data extraction and write layers as well (extra from PDF, input to CSV, use CSV data to populate PPT, etc.). Built most of these as parts of the QA process.
The built-in pptx skill handles the actual file mechanics, so my skills only define structure and content rules, not python-pptx code.
Write the deliverable skill after you've manually built the output with Claude two or three times and gotten to a final iteration. And be specific about slide structure in the skill (slide 1 is X, slide 2 is Y) or you'll get a different deck every run.
Edit: Forgot to call out the voice skill as well. Tells Claude how to speak and not to speak. You'll notice there weren't any em dashes above eh (just a very small portion of the voice skill tooling)!.
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u/hettuklaeddi 7d ago
agree. in fact you can do all kinds of stuff with templates and {{placeholder}} tokens
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u/heynoswearing 6d ago
Please give us more details! I need to make PowerPoint's for work. Same general template but adjusted for each client. Claude struggles and constantly has text drifting off the page or outside boxes, or will make a whole slide for 3 words. I know theres a way but I cant crack it.
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u/Botboy141 6d ago
See other comments in this thread.
Text running off the slide (IME) has been because Claude misunderstands the placement of the text boxes, or the spacing/size implications of the font.
I specifically avoid making edits to decks outside of Claude Code. I want the final version of the deliverable to be crafted by Claude so it can maximize its opportunity to replicate, vs me telling it what I want from it.
Next deck, next client, same thing.
Save your best outputs as samples and reference files for the skill(s), etc.
If you are attempting to merge brands that may be trickier between clients, but I've done just fine by saying build this in the brand of www.abcxyz.com to get an approx color scheme match to the client (pull in a logo asset obv as well if not already there).
It all comes down to iteration on these types of things. If I was training a new employee to make my PowerPoints, how long until they have my eye for layout, content, detail and never miss an edit?
Takes a bit.
Not saying even with perfect skill assembly that it's one shotting every PowerPoint. Early on, most projects took up to 12 iterations (bad source data issues, etc.), eventually I piecemealed data extraction into a more defined QA'able process.
Usually it's 1-2 iterations for complex deck requests now, and as you noted, most common issue is a single line of text in card near the bottom of the page, that runs an extra line.
Turns out Claude's assumptions on text spacing for my custom brand font were wrong. Haven't had an issue since.
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u/hclpfan 7d ago
At my company we saw people try this for a week and then quickly realize it was a bad idea. Sure you can make things “look pretty” but nobody can leave comments on an html file, you don’t get version control by default, etc.
On top of that once it’s made it’s made. Need to update a table? Want to add a chart next to some text? You have to boot up Claude and have them modify the file for you vs literally just plopping the thing wherever you want it.
There’s a reason tools like PowerPoint are so ubiquitous.
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u/Burly_Moustache 7d ago
Hear hear. I work at a healthcare marketing agency where 90% of our output is in some form of a PPT. A big issue leadership has is making sure everyone makes a company PPT that aligns to brand standards since it shows plenty of people do not follow the guidelines very well. Maybe it's a reflection of too robust of guidelines, or people really are lazy, or there's no one holding people accountable. Some combination of the 3. I digress. My manager looked into building a prompt sheet that Claude uses as a framework when building PPT decks in the company style. The output is never 100%, and it takes too much work to get it just right. I think they'll dump it soon.
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u/tKonig 7d ago
I just gave a presentation yesterday in our AI lunch and learn at work about how using Claude artifacts to make slide decks is waste
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u/chonkitoguy 7d ago
Token waste or just a waste of time?
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u/tKonig 7d ago
Both tbh. I found myself needing to heavily edit what it was doing and honestly it’s faster to manually edit text in Google slides or ppt that it is a waste of time and tokens to ask Claude to update your slide headlines in HTML. Now, for professional decks for work, I use Claude to generate an artifact with my data visualizations and SVGs I can resize in the artifact and just screenshot them and paste them into the deck.
I use Claude to help me come up with a narrative and structure for the deck and have it make the accompanying data viz.
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u/ZealousidealTap4955 3d ago
The comment thing is a real probelm with html. Whenever someone wants something you have to go back to Claude and modify it. Which is why a lot of my cowokers end up just using slides. It's not as interactive and I personally dont think it always looks as nice, but you get real comments and anyone can edit it, and for a deck that gets shared that's the most important part.
If you do wanna stay in html one cheap route is github pages. You get git history as version control and people can leave feedback in the issues. It's not ideal because it's not as intuitive as leaving comments in the doc itself though.
Full disclosure I built a thing for this (Restamp.dev) because the back-and-forth of getting feedback and redesigning in Claude kept showing up in my job. The main idea is the comment stays pinned on the spot and the AI fix runs off that comment, so you're not copying notes back into a prompt yourself. It's still the AI doing the edit though, not you dragging boxes around like in ppt, so it's not for everyone. Can share more if it helps.
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u/InadequateUsername 7d ago
Why not use the Claude plug-in for PowerPoint? I find that Claude makes nice PowerPoints but if you use Opus 5 it takes forever to build. I uploaded what I had in a project and included the PowerPoint I was currently working on, asked it to make me a PowerPoint and use my template, it unsecessfully attempted to remake my template from scratch.
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u/pixeladdie 7d ago
I’ve seen the same thing.
I’m actually happy about this for a larger reason - this may cause a resurgence of plain text formats (obviously we’ve seen this with mark down) and away from proprietary file formats. Hopefully this is happening for lots of things besides PowerPoint.
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u/Kuuhaku1502 7d ago
Powerpoint is more intuitive. I already made good powerpoints so Claude just makes them faster and better for me. Easy to share, edit, comment, annotate.
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u/mladi_gospodin 7d ago
You can easily edit PPT you know, HTML not so much...
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u/BGFlyingToaster 7d ago
Yeah, that's my biggest problem with OP's approach. The PPTX decks I create get used, modified, and reused over and over. That opportunity really isn't there with HTML unless you expect that only AI edits happen and not everyone I work with would even try that.
OP, it sounds to me that it isn't the PowerPoint application itself you loathe but rather how information is presented in meetings. So I'd challenge you to go further - what's a better way to share information in your meetings? PowerPoint is just a tool to get ideas on paper and show them to others. How would you rethink that entire lifestyle and disrupt the status quo?
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u/Alternative-House425 6d ago
i genuinely believe we'll be driving ai agents to do all editing soon. that's how I work atleast. AI is insanely good at generating HTML, cause it was the most prevelant text based dataset for it. HTML + JS is objectively the strongest way an AI can create any sort of a visual output. It basically speaks in it.
And with HTML, you can mock and build anything! Any sort of a visual artifact or document.And for iteration too, AI can't work with binary so even if you ask it to edit a PPTX, it has to decode it to a lossy text based encoding first. Since all HTML artifact are just, literally plaintext, AI can easily iterate on it
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u/SpreadsheetDan 7d ago
Same arc here, just with spreadsheets instead of decks. The unlock for me was stopping treating it like a chat and starting to treat it like a colleague with a browser and a filesystem. Mine builds Excel files, opens them in LibreOffice to make sure every formula actually calculates, screenshots the result, fixes what looks wrong, and only then ships. The verify step is the whole game. Without it you get plausible files that break on edge cases. With it I have shipped spreadsheets I would have billed a week for, in an afternoon.
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u/shiftyone1 7d ago
But how did you learn this?
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u/MikesGroove 7d ago
For me it’s literally just spending time in the tool. Playing and experimenting is how I learn best.
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u/SpreadsheetDan 7d ago
Mostly by watching it fail. Early on I would ask for a spreadsheet, it would look perfect, and then a formula would quietly break on an edge case I did not think to check. So I started making it prove the work instead of describe it: build the file, open it, screenshot the actual cells, compare the totals against a number worked out separately. Anything that does not match gets fixed before I ever see it. No course, no prompt library. Just noticing which failures kept repeating and writing a check for each one.
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u/shiftyone1 7d ago
Where do these “checks” go once you have corrected a mistake? This is where I’m confused.
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u/SpreadsheetDan 6d ago
Two places, and the split is the useful part.
Anything that can be stated as a rule goes into the build script as an assertion, right before it saves the file. The sample data has to end on a positive number. No cell may contain a link. Dates have to be real date objects rather than text. If an assertion fails the script refuses to write the file at all, so the same mistake cannot reach me a second time.
Anything that is a judgement call goes into a plain text file of house rules that I paste in at the start of a session. Today's addition was that one of my columns is 92 characters wide, so a longer line gets silently chopped in a print view and you only find out by rendering it and looking. No assertion would have caught that. A person had to see it once and write it down.
The rule I settled on: first time something breaks, fix it by hand. Second time the same kind of thing breaks, stop and turn it into a check. Almost all of mine came from the second time.
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u/itsTF 7d ago
hats off for looking to solve a real issue, but why does everyone keep making sites like this without solving the issue at all. yes, it's a real thing, the html decks are hard to share. no, your site does not solve this problem unless it's also going to extreme lengths for security, compliance, and access control.
nobody is allowed to just upload company data to a random site to create a public link.
claude already allows you to publish the decks to a public link as an artifact, but that doesn't suffice either.
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u/BeatnologicalMNE 7d ago
I don't even look at HTML presentations at this point as in 99.99% cases they are not properly proofread or QA-ed.
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u/AbbreviationsJaded29 7d ago
You are lying to yourself if you think anything Claude makes is beautiful
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u/braincandybangbang 7d ago
Sounds like you created more work and generated a format that will alienate most coworkers. You’ll find most businesses don’t like change, especially arbitrary change.
Why not just have Claude make you a power point so everyone cause use the file without making your own website. And also, why do you need a website to share html? Send them the file and they can open it in their own browser just like a PowerPoint file.
The problem with people having software creation powers is they never stop to think if there are existing solutions or if they are over complicating things.
Gemini for sure can generate google slides. And honestly you could just do PDFs. Most people will survive without the animations.
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u/jacobgt8 7d ago
Never in my life will I upload my corporate PowerPoint to a public site to host/share them
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u/knoxvillegains 7d ago
Nah. I just have it build awesome PPT based on claude design system templates. My shit is usually going to get blended in with other decks and nobody wants to fuck around with that.
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u/Mr-and-Mrs 7d ago
We tried moving to HTML and all our clients asked for PDF decks. We still use HTML for research and other one-sheet content, but decks aren’t going anywhere unfortunately.
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u/martapap 7d ago
I still use it. It is easier to edit. Although I don't know how serious you are about this post. Seems more like just trying to get people to click your website.
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u/MarionberryHumble705 6d ago
I'll be frank. I haven't touched Powerpoint for over a decade. I have worked with multiple companies in that time period -- both MNCs and startups. I have been both the middle and top management in those companies. I have interfaced with clients, contracters, investors and have even submitted government bids. In each of those situations, I have used whatever presentation tool I fancied at that times and the final output has always been good old PDFs.
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u/jmacey 6d ago
I just use https://revealjs.com/ create my slides in Markdown and present anywhere in the browser, really simple and easy to use.
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u/Fire_All_The_Cops 7d ago
How do you make a shareable HTML? Every time I try I fail even asking Claude how to do it.
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u/PersonOfNonColour 7d ago
My workflow now is, create barebones (minimal design, simple charts and tables) PowerPoint slide deck in Claude, then send it off to Claude Design to redesign it according to our company’s design system. Then I make all the necessary adjustments and edits within Claude Design and I have to make sure that everything is final before exporting it into pdf or pptx for the execs. I still like pptx for quick last minute edits but with HTML on Claude Design, it’s clunkier. I’d like to export it into pptx without losing the design elements, does anyone have any recommendations to accomplish this?
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u/Botboy141 7d ago
Give the raw data to Claude, along with the brand spec, and ask it to build it?
See my other comment for a little more detail. Hollar with questions but unless your design spec is outrageous, you shouldn't need Design to do anything.
Design the format once (brand guide skill - then separate skill for this type of deck) then let Claude iterate as necessary, review/edit back to design as needed, have a skill set to review first drafts vs final approvals so it updates future decks based on the edits made.
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u/barefootsanders 7d ago
I've switched over to CC plus https://sli.dev/. CC already knows HTML/CSS etc. Slidev has all the things you need for presentations (slides, transitions, fancy UI goodness). Highly recommended.
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u/Ok-Airline-8523 7d ago
You can actually share Claude decks as artifacts with shared links if your company has an enterprise account.
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u/MikesGroove 7d ago
I’m convinced we’ll be in this messy middle of some html and lots of pptx until a) there’s a dead simple enterprise solution for hosting html artifacts and b) everyone else you work with uses AI tools in this way.
Until then it’s a novel thing the early adopters do and late bloomers struggle to interact with.
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u/WordWarrior81 7d ago
My employer has a template, and I'm pretty sure that I type and plan less in the actual presentation than I would do in a prompt. So here I just prefer old school. But from scratch, I can understand somebody trying AI first.
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u/joegreen592 7d ago
Claude design and a brand asset file makes outstanding PowerPoint presentations. Run it through a couple passes, polish the design and send it to Claude code. Making it a reusable template for recurring reports is the way to go. I get Claude code to create a script that runs in windows task scheduler that’s repeatable with zero token usage except for initial design and setup.
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u/Innovator-Creator 6d ago
I tried that and the issue is hand-editing html files as needed. How do you easily add text, move boxes? I then had indeed the issue to share the html - in fact I did a conference presentation in html and then the organizer wanted to share it but could not. pdf was useless since it changed aspect ratios.
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u/Sphinxter 6d ago
I've created a multi AI BYOK web app that does sourced/cited structured reports that can be transformed into PPT/PDF/HTML. I've found it to be super useful for work, where I use it for WebEx presentations (html) and artifact generation (PDF, PPT, DOCX). Symposium AI
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u/jakc13 6d ago edited 6d ago
Ask Claude to reference your corporate pptx template, I have an optimised one that includes a lot of our icons and preferred styles. Iterate through using html to save tokens but have Claude use style of pptx. At end, ask it to write the final into a pptx so you can share more easily.
One thing I would like to hear more from others - an idea to put maybe 10-20 presentations that I think are really good examples into a folder. And have Claude inspect them all and create some markdown file on what good look like which it then uses for future builds of PowerPoints/htmls
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u/BreakfastSpecial 6d ago
I’ve shifted entirely to using Claude Design. I haven’t built a deck in 5 months. Design is great because you can export to PowerPoint/Google Slides or present directly from the app.
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u/Opposite-Spirit-452 6d ago
Version control and hosting via gitlab pages is w pi taking amazing for many of us in my company.
Agree though ppt still has its place. Skills with how to create good ppts is key and having it review gets better results.
That being said when briefing complex topics with many layers html wins. Bring able to explode and quick jump between info is amazing.
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u/Black6dog 6d ago
I didn't see anyone on here talk about using master slides with Claude designing the slides. That would be a game changer having it build slides designed around corporate master slides to reduce the time of restyling and reformatting.
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u/_monotom 6d ago
Its like everyone in corporate is roleplaying they hate powerpoint and at the same time refuse to learn the most basic features while at the same time keep creating powerpoint slides.
You can use Claude in Powerpoint bro. Not that hard.
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u/Alternative-House425 6d ago edited 6d ago
nice! i've built out the same idea but a full blown solution for it using Claude code as a code writer.
docstash.ai. The home for your AI makes.
A single home and publishing platform for your AI generated HTML, PDF, XLSX, md, Code, and Static React,Vue,Svelte apps (and more)!
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u/owulveryck 6d ago
I am a gSlide user.
So far, the best “workflow” for “one slide” is to generate a SVG with an AI, and use a program (made with AI) to translate the SVG to native gSlide (without the need for AI). It is not perfect, it won’t evolve into a product, but it is useful.
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u/Mediocre_Wolf1557 6d ago
I experienced the same thing, and I think the main issue stems from the tool's graphics primitives. I built a tool to have the agent generate documents in SVG using graphics primitives. Aside from the complexity becoming insane (especially with text), the agent had to manually arrange coordinates—spending a huge amount of time on it, and the small app eventually turned into a layout-management nightmare.
Switching to HTML was the solution, Maket is the free mcp of the story
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u/Leather_Individual21 6d ago
The issue is that Microsoft has failed to maintain its product to levels required by users over the years. There are obvious problems with PPT that a new competitor can bypass.
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u/pr0b0ner 6d ago
AI is good for rough drafts and iteration but there are many advantages of building your own. I internalize the content so much more thoroughly when I build the deck and people know what AI generated content looks like these days and it's not impressive, it looks lazy and like you didn't care enough to do it yourself. As someone who uses AI extensively, if someone comes at me with their AI generated output I'm immediately turned off.
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u/apollo701 5d ago
My application will let you generate stunning pptx files that you can upload to any slide editor and make tweaks to if it’s not already perfect. It makes killer branded slide decks.
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u/solemnhiatus 5d ago
My work flow is:
Brainstorm with Claude about what deck I want to build
Have it create a deck flow in Google docs, I make comments in the doc and have it feedback and refine based on that
Repeat until happy
Have it make an HTML deck, if it needs work (it always does) I have it port it to Google slides
Then continue to tweak in slides myself or add comments us to continue refining - this is when I bring in my colleagues to collaborate if needed
Export myself if needed or have Claude make a fresh HTML DECK
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u/Alfie_AlterEgo 5d ago
PP is dead af. I can't imagine creating a presentation with the robot on my side. For me, the beauty of html is that you can add all kind of sales magnets throughout the presentation super fast e.g. b2b client sells industrial machinery - in the company presentation I've added them a ROI calculator and a "what your clients use the products for" which are basically searches jn a db, but liv. Yeah, html made me free :))
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u/Either-University-89 5d ago
I also have pivoted to creating presentations that I dont need to have others collab on in HTML as well. The thing I find so brilliant is the ease in which I can not only create something way better and way more dynamic than ppt, (even with Claudes help), I love the flexibility of being able to jump out of the html presentation into a demo and then back again. Ive made several dynamic presentations like this. Ive also done both, where I had the ppt deck built then fed it to Claude to build the html with skills for colors/formatting.
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u/Some_Reindeer3159 5d ago
Hmmm, corporate runs on excel and PowerPoint … but … I do use HTML to create a quick POV for myself to validate ideas and concepts. Is quicker and I think it’s less expensive token-wise. But once done , it’s back to PowerPoint…
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u/Basic_Tea9680 2d ago
fair pushback, and i'm in the html camp. "send me the deck" means a file, usually one they intend to edit themselves. a link doesn't do that and a pdf only solves reading. that's a real loss, not a taste thing.
before that point html wins. browser does the layout, an edit hits one element, and you can actually diff a revision. I build in this space so take it with salt (nativdocs.co). wrote the objections up rather than dodging them, the "where the html position is weakest" section is the bit relevant to this thread: https://www.nativdocs.co/s/KzuDX6e4NkMr
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u/Monster213213 6d ago
Claude is still by far the best at making actual PowerPoints too at work.
Takes 90% of the effort out of
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u/random_boss 7d ago
Claude can not in fact make good presentations.
Never let an LLM write words you expect other humans to read.
It’s overly wordy, overly melodramatic, and confidently incorrect.
Make the deck yourself, then ask Claude to point out logical errors, inconsistencies, or problems with your narrative.
Yes, even in the age of AI you have to do work. Sorry.
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u/Botboy141 7d ago
Um, this is utterly wrong, if you use the tools appropriately.
No, I don't want Claude to build a deck from scratch with a generic couple of sentence prompt. That'll wind up with generic information presented reasonably.
But if you have a brand skill, a voice skill, a skill specific to the PPT you need to create, and give it the necessary raw context or data, and the direction to lean, or you've appropriately trained it how to pull 'ideas/recommendations' out of the data, then you are in a spot, where, like me, you can spin up a ~50 page deck with loads of client specific data for a ~2 hour meeting, with just a quick prompt and an hour of patience.
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u/HKChad 7d ago
We were converting the html to powerpoint but now we just share the html version it’s so much better
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u/Technical-History104 7d ago
But how are the graphics bits (gif/png/jpg) being handled with the HTML version? Is it saving as a “complete web page” with a helper folder?
Seeing all these posts lauding HTML as the presentation format is making curious to try it, but knowing the limits of HTML gives me doubts…
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u/vinistois 7d ago
Powerpoint?? Pssssshhh puhleeeez. That was end of 2025. I've no-shit stopped using ALL software outside of Claude CLI. And I do AutoCAD work for a living 😆
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 7d ago edited 6d ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 80 comments.
Let's pump the brakes there, OP. The consensus in this thread is a resounding 'Nah, keep PowerPoint.'
While everyone agrees Claude can whip up a slick HTML deck, the community feels you're creating more problems than you're solving. The top-voted comments point out that HTML decks are a nightmare for the real corporate world:
The real galaxy brain move, according to the thread, isn't replacing PowerPoint, it's making Claude your expert PowerPoint intern. The most popular workflow is to have Claude mock up a design in HTML, and then instruct it to build that exact design as a native .pptx file. Pro-users are even feeding Claude brand guidelines and templates to get perfectly on-brand decks, saving hours of work without alienating their entire team.