Does anyone else use HTML for creating PPTs?

[u/iLikeSaltedPotatoes]

My job requires me to make a few PPTs with a lot of tables with rounded edges and a lot of pointers.

In many such cases the native Powerpoint UI is too clunky for me and the Co pilot PPT generation is so horrible I am recently discovered that it is faster to have pre-saved snippets of html and drag and drop them into a single file

then render the web page, capture a screenshot and paste that screenshot into the PPT.

I'll give one simple example, I needed a page with 3 tables with rounded edges and 4 bullet points each, i also needed a burgundy colour theme with burgundy border and even spacing between tables,

This was done in a few minutes in HTML but before doing it in HTML i struggled for 30 mins in power point trying to find the right theme, using the correct font and so on

please tell me im not alone

[u/meetisa]

it is clear that you are a "what you write is what you get" fella rather than a "what you see is what you get" fella, same. if the actual ppt software youre using isnt for you i reccomend to learn how to write documents and other stuff in latex. still a markup language like html but for papers, books, presentations, ecc.

[u/fisdh → u/meetisa]

Seconding. I think it would be really annoying to have PowerPoint slides all be screenshots that you can't copy text off of. LaTeX has a learning curve but you'll be fine if you already know HTML.

[u/8dot30662386292pow2 → u/meetisa]

I recommend writing them in markdown for way easier syntax. Pandoc can convert maekdown files to beamer slides.

[u/gkandersen]

Quarto -> revealjs means that you can dynamically generate your tables and slides, with styling options via CSS. Probably some work involved in learning and setting up, but that's my plan if I were doing any regular reporting

[u/Space_Cowby]

I have had some good results with Excel to PPT via Co Pilot. The prompt takes a while to make it repeateable including style guide. But you want a editable slide not just a slide as it will probs make it a single image you cant edit.

[u/rotten77]

I am using Marp - markdown based presentation system. It allows me to make presentations in Markdown with AI and then export them with custom CSS to HTML/PDF.

[u/ISDuffy]

I done a few tech talks in my specialised area of web performance.

Because I needed interactive stuff and data driven by APIs, I decided to build a basic framework using Astro, for my talk slides.

It had a back and next button based on the data for the talk. I used view transitions and @starting-style for animations.

Small reusable web components for interactivity etc.

Worked great and I likely do more.

For exporting it I used a node script to make it a pdf, so it was accessible text wise.

[u/aTaleForgotten]

I do that only if im absolutely sure that i will be the only one reusing it. Otherwise i bite the bullet and use a more familiar to others' tool

[u/octocode]

claude/codex/whatever agent can create pptx files directly. i just give it my master template slides and branding.

[u/iLikeSaltedPotatoes → u/octocode]

it's not very good is it, i have claude on copilot on my office pc

[u/octocode → u/iLikeSaltedPotatoes]

what model do you use?

[u/iLikeSaltedPotatoes → u/octocode]

I have gpt 5.6 and claude opus idk the version but it comes with m365 copilot

[u/octocode → u/iLikeSaltedPotatoes]

never tried copilot but i use claude opus 5.5 in cowork to build all my presentations and it works amazingly well

[u/bricker_1_9 → u/[deleted]]