User guide

Slides

You have something to present. This is the slides program, from an empty deck to presenting it, and how the agent builds one with you.

The slides program makes presentations: a deck of wide slides with titles, text, shapes and pictures, speaker notes, a presenter view for the day, and PowerPoint files in and out. It opens as a tab in the chat’s browser panel, so the agent can build a deck for you and keep changing the one you have open.

This article is for anyone who has to stand up and talk: how to make a deck, lay it out and theme it, present it, print it, move it to and from PowerPoint, and what to ask the agent for.

The browser panel with a deck named Volunteer Orientation at aaf://slides/Volunteer%20Orientation. Its bar carries Image…, Present, Save and ⋯, and a note reads “The agent added 2 slides after slide 1.” with Undo. Below the slide toolbar — New slide, Text box, Shape, alignment, lists and Theme — three slide thumbnails titled Volunteer Orientation, What Volunteers Do and Questions?, with the title slide shown large: “Volunteer Orientation, Spring Fair • 15 May 2027”, and a Speaker notes box beneath. — Asked for a short deck called Volunteer Orientation for the spring fair on 15 May 2027 — a title slide, a slide on what volunteers do on fair day, and a slide saying to contact the volunteer chair with questions, with no names or contact details — the agent made the deck, built the slides and opened it in the browser panel, after one question answered with Allow changes to “…” in this chat. This is a real turn.

Making a deck

Choose File ▸ New ▸ Slides. The Slides list opens in a new tab of the browser panel with the name box ready: type a name and press New deck. File ▸ Open ▸ Slides…, or View ▸ Slides ▸ All Slides, opens the same list. Where decks are kept, and how saving and versions work, is the same for every program and is in The office.

The bar across the top shows the deck’s name, whether it is saved, Image…, Present ▾, Save, and ⋯ (More), which holds Versions…, Rename…, Export…, Print or save as PDF…, All decks and Delete….

Below it are three areas: the slide thumbnails down the left, the slide you are working on, and under it Speaker notes (Click to add notes). Slides are wide, 16:9.

Slides, layouts and themes

New slide ▾, on the toolbar and at the top of the thumbnails, adds a slide in one of the layouts: Title, Title and content, Two content, Section header or Blank. Right-click a thumbnail for the same layouts and for Duplicate, Hide slide (or Show slide), Move up, Move down and Delete; Remove background appears when a slide has one, as slides brought in from PowerPoint can. A hidden slide stays in the deck and is skipped when you present.

The rest of the toolbar works on the slide and what you have selected: Text box; Shape ▾ (Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, Arrow); Undo and Redo; B and I; Size, from 12 to 80 points; Colour, which offers the theme’s own text, heading, accent and background colours and a few plain ones; Left, Centre and Right; • List and 1. List; Fill and Line for shapes; Forward and Back to bring an item in front of another or send it behind; and Theme ▾.

The themes are Executive, Minimal and Dark. A deck brought in from PowerPoint also lists its own theme first, marked “(from the file)”. The fonts the themes use, Inter and Source Serif 4, come with the application.

Image… adds a picture from your computer to the current slide: PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP, up to 10 MB.

Presenting

Present ▾ offers From the start (F5), From this slide (Shift+F5) and Rehearse.

Presenting opens the audience’s window, filling a screen: a second display if one is connected, otherwise the one you are using. The deck’s own tab becomes the presenter view — the current slide, the next one (End of show after the last), where you are in the deck, the time since you started with Pause and Reset, a clock, your notes, and End show. Rehearse runs the presenter view with no audience window, to practise with the clock.

To	Press
Go forward	Right or down arrow, Space, Page Down or N
Go back	Left or up arrow, Page Up, Backspace or P
Jump to a slide	Its number, then Enter
Black the screen	B or full stop
Stop	Esc

After the last slide the audience sees “The show has ended. Press Esc or → to return to the deck.”

PowerPoint files in and out

Import…, beside New deck on the list, brings in a PowerPoint .pptx file as a new deck, up to 50 MB. A note on the new deck lists what was left out or changed: slides fitted to 16:9 from another shape; transitions, animations, videos and sounds; SmartArt, equations and embedded objects; comments; macros, which are never run or brought in; charts and tables, which come in as pictures; shapes drawn as rectangles, bent connectors made straight, gradient and pattern fills kept as one colour, and large pictures made smaller.

⋯ ▸ Export… saves the deck as a .pptx file, asking where.

Printing and PDF

⋯ ▸ Print or save as PDF… lays the deck out for paper. Choose the Layout (Slides, or Slides with notes for a speaker’s copy), for notes pages the Paper (Letter or A4), and whether to Include hidden slides. Then Save as PDF… writes a PDF where you choose, Print… opens it in your computer’s PDF viewer to print from, and Back to the deck returns to editing.

Asking the agent

Ask in your own words: make a deck for the volunteer briefing, add a slide on safety after the second one, shorten the bullets on slide 3, put the date in the subtitle, add speaker notes to every slide, move the thank-you slide to the end, hide the draft slide, save a PowerPoint copy. The agent works in the deck open in the chat’s browser panel, opening it there first if it needs to. It can also bring in a .pptx file you attach to the chat, as a new deck, and tell you what was left out.

Reading: it can list every slide with its layout and title, read one slide’s text and notes, see what you have selected, and look at a picture of a slide the way you see it.
Checking its own work: it can find text that overflows its box, items past the slide’s edge, and items that overlap.
Building: it adds slides with a layout, a title, text with lists and emphasis, a second column, and notes.
Changing: it edits a slide’s text, moves and resizes items, sets text colours, fills and lines, adds text boxes, rectangles, ellipses, lines and arrows, removes items, and writes notes.
Arranging: it moves, duplicates, hides, shows and deletes slides.
A PowerPoint copy: it saves the deck as a .pptx file in your Downloads folder.

Each request lands as one change. A note above the slides says what the agent did — “The agent changed slide 1 (2 edits).”, for instance — with Undo, which takes back that change.

What it asks

Without asking: reading the deck, checking it, looking at a slide, and seeing your selection.
Asked once: making a new deck or bringing one in from a file — allowing that also lets the agent change it in this chat. For a deck you already had, the first change asks, and its main answer is Allow changes to “…” in this chat; Allow once is behind the arrow beside it. Saving a PowerPoint copy counts as a change.
Each time: nothing the agent does in a deck is asked about every time.

In a deck, removing slides is a change. Once you have allowed changes to a deck, the agent can delete slides or remove items from them without asking again. Each of those is one step that Undo takes back, and earlier versions under Versions… can be restored.

Approvals and permissions explains the answers in full.

Good to know

Only you can make a PDF. The agent saves PowerPoint copies only.
The theme and pictures are yours to choose: the agent does not change the theme or add pictures.
A deck holds up to 500 slides, each with up to 500 items, and up to 20,000 characters of notes per slide.
A deck can be up to 32 MB; a picture that would take it over is refused.
Deleting every slide leaves one blank slide.
A deck is kept as the application’s own file, not as a PowerPoint file. To hand one to someone, export it or save a PDF.

Back to all user-guide articles.