How do I use AI text-to-slide?

AI text-to-slide turns a prompt — or a chunk of raw text you paste in — into a finished slide or presentation. You describe what you want, SlideHub asks AI to pick the right layout from your slide library, and the slide is built and inserted directly into PowerPoint (or generated in the web app). You stay in control of the layout, content density, and target output along the way.

You'll find AI text-to-slide in two places:

• In PowerPoint, open the SlideHub task pane and pick Text to slide from the navigation.
• In the web app, open Text to slide from the explore area.

Example: you're writing a board update and you have rough notes — "Q3 revenue up 15%, costs down 8%, EMEA strongest region". You paste them into Text to slide, choose Medium (optimize for meeting) density, and SlideHub picks a comparison layout from your library, fills in the numbers, and drops the finished slide into your deck. The whole thing takes under a minute.

How to use AI text-to-slide

Follow these steps. Every label in bold is exactly what you'll see on screen.

1. Open Text to slide — from the task pane in PowerPoint or from Text to slide in the web app. You'll see the question What content do you want on your slide/presentation? (or, if you opened the feature from an active slide in PowerPoint, Should we rebuild the current slide or create a new?).
2. Type or paste your content into the editor. As you wait, the placeholder rotates through example prompts to give you a feel for what works. You can write a short instruction ("Create an agenda slide with 5 topics") or paste a longer block of text you want turned into slides.
3. (Optional) Click Next or the equivalent confirm button. SlideHub will say We've reviewed your prompt. Confirm/adjust it and we'll get started. along with a set of settings AI has pre-filled based on your input. Adjust any of them:

• Main content approach. Tick Use active slide as main content to seed the run with the slide you currently have open in PowerPoint (only available in the task pane when a slide is active). Tick Preserve content when you want SlideHub to keep your exact text and only choose a layout — useful when the wording is already approved.
• Target output. Choose Single slide, Presentation, or Specific number of slides (with Number of slides to generate to pick the exact count, up to 30).
• Sources when generating content (if enabled for your company). Tick Library content/knowledge search to let AI pull from your SlideHub library and knowledge sources, and/or Web search to let it look up fresh facts on the open web.
• Slide content density. Pick High (expand for detailed report) for stand-alone reports, Medium (optimize for meeting) for typical meetings, or Low (summarize for audience) for headline-only slides you'll talk over.
• Review the outline / Review content. Tick this if you want to see AI's reformulated text or outline before layouts are chosen. Recommended on longer prompts.

4. Click the confirm button to continue. If you ticked Review content or Review the outline, you'll see AI's interpretation first — edit it, then continue.
5. (Optional) For presentations, you'll see an outline overview with one row per slide. Edit slide titles, reorder them, or remove the ones you don't want before moving on.
6. Pick a layout for each slide. SlideHub shows layouts that match the content type AI inferred from your prompt — for example, comparison layouts for "X vs Y" prompts, timeline layouts for sequence prompts. The selection is informed by your library's tags, categories, and subcategories, so layouts you've tagged well surface first. See [[how-does-ai-tagging-of-assets-work]] for how AI uses your tagging.
7. Pick style settings — colors, icon style, illustration style, and image library — then confirm.
8. SlideHub generates the slide and inserts it into your deck (or makes it available to download in the web app). You'll be prompted to rate the result, which helps the product team improve future runs.

Tip: If you already know which slide design you want, pre-select it from your library before starting Text to slide. SlideHub will skip the layout selection step and fill that specific slide for you.

Tips and tricks for the best results

The AI is good at finding the right layout and writing the right words — but it depends heavily on what you give it. These are the patterns that consistently produce strong results.

Write prompts AI can act on

• Lead with the verb. "Create", "Summarize", "Compare", "Turn this data into…" Verbs tell AI what kind of slide you want, which directly affects which layout is picked.
• Include the audience. "…for executives", "…for our customer success team", "…for a sales kickoff". Audience changes both tone and density.
• Include the format. "…in 4 bullet points", "…as a comparison with pros and cons", "…as a timeline with 5 phases". Format hints steer AI toward the right layout family.
• Specify the language if it's not English. "…in Spanish", "…in German". AI will both write and select layouts that suit the language.
• Paste structured data, don't describe it. If you have a table or a list, paste it directly. AI detects tabular and list structures and tends to pick layouts that fit them.

Some prompts that work well:

• "Create a slide about our enterprise pricing model in Spanish."
• "Summarize our Customer Success team work process in 4 bullet points."
• "Summarize these meeting notes into 3 key takeaways for executives."
• "Create a comparison slide: Product A vs Product B with pros and cons."
• "Turn this data into a visual timeline showing project phases."
• "Create an agenda slide with 5 topics and estimated time for each."

Match the density to the situation

The Slide content density setting is one of the highest-impact dials. Pick it based on how the slide will be used, not how much content you have:

• High — the slide is a stand-alone artifact someone will read on their own (a board doc, a leave-behind, a printed report). Expanded text, full context.
• Medium — the slide is for a meeting where you'll talk through it. Clear structure, main points visible, no overload.
• Low — you're presenting live to an audience and the slide is a backdrop. Headlines and visuals, minimal text.

Re-running the same prompt at different densities is often faster than editing the slide afterwards.

Use Preserve content when wording is sacred

If your prompt is the slide content — for example, a finalised quote, a customer's exact words, a legal or compliance sentence — tick Preserve content. SlideHub keeps your text verbatim and uses AI only to pick the layout and arrange the shapes. Without Preserve content, AI may rephrase for clarity or fit, which is usually helpful but can be the wrong call when the wording matters.

Choose the right sources

If Sources when generating content is enabled for your company:

• Library content/knowledge search is best when you want SlideHub to pull from your own decks, documents, and knowledge base. Use it for company-specific facts — your products, processes, customers, financials.
• Web search is best when you need fresh external facts — current statistics, recent news, industry references. Don't use it when you need a SlideHub-internal answer.

Leave both off for a fast, prompt-only run where you don't need AI to look anything up.

Help AI pick the right layout

AI picks layouts from your library based on the tags, categories, and subcategories you've assigned to each slide. The cleaner that data is, the better the matches will be:

• Make sure category and subcategory descriptions are clear and specific — AI reads them and uses them as rules. Vague descriptions produce inconsistent layout choices.
• Use AI tagging to cover the long tail of keywords on each slide. See [[how-does-ai-tagging-of-assets-work]] and [[what-are-search-only-tags]] for how AI keeps your tag library tidy.
• If a particular slide layout keeps being picked when it shouldn't, edit its tags or refine the subcategory description.

Review before you commit to layouts

For longer prompts and full presentations, tick Review the outline (for presentations) or Review content (for single slides). It's much cheaper to edit AI's reformulated text or outline at that step than to regenerate the slides after layouts have been picked.

Iterate, don't perfect

Text-to-slide is fast. Treat the first run as a draft:

• If the layout is wrong, return to the layout selection step and pick a different one — your content stays the same.
• If the words are wrong, return to the input step, refine the prompt, and re-run.
• If the structure is wrong (too many slides, wrong order), edit the outline and continue.

Three short iterations almost always beat one long, perfectly-engineered prompt.

Where do I find slides I've generated before?

Every run is saved to your history. From the Text to slide page, click the history icon in the header to open the list. You can revisit any past run, see the prompt you used, and rebuild from there.

Who can use AI text-to-slide?

AI text-to-slide is gated at the company level and per user:

• Your account needs AI features enabled (an account-wide setting).
• Your company needs AI text-to-slide turned on. Some companies enable it for everyone; others enable it only for selected users.
• You also need access to the asset library the layouts are drawn from.

If Text to slide doesn't appear in your task pane or web navigation, ask an account Owner to confirm whether the feature is enabled for your company and your user.

Is what I write kept private?

AI text-to-slide is currently in beta. During beta, the SlideHub product team can see prompts and generated content to help improve the feature. After beta ends, prompts and content will stay private — SlideHub will not store or review them. The in-app notice on the input page repeats this so you always know the current state.

For more on how AI interacts with the rest of SlideHub, see [[how-does-ai-tagging-of-assets-work]] and [[how-does-ai-labeling-work-for-icons-and-images]].

Updated on: 05/20/2026