PowerPoint Designer vs Copilot in PowerPoint (2026): What Each Does to Your Deck, Tested

In our test on 30 September 2026, Copilot in PowerPoint kept about 22% of our report’s text (115 of 529 words) and removed both tables and the chart. On a simpler product deck, asked to keep all text and graphics, it kept everything. PowerPoint Designer works differently: it leaves your words alone and suggests layouts one slide at a time.

What is PowerPoint Designer? Designer is the built-in PowerPoint feature that suggests layout ideas for the slide you have selected. In current versions its button is labeled Design Suggestions.

What is Copilot in PowerPoint? Copilot is Microsoft’s AI assistant inside PowerPoint. It can summarize a deck, add slides, apply a new theme and, in Agent Mode, edit the presentation itself.

PowerPoint Designer vs Copilot: comparison table

Feature	PowerPoint Designer (Design Suggestions)	Copilot in PowerPoint	Wonderslide
What it does	Suggests layouts for one selected slide	Summarizes, adds slides, applies a new theme, rewrites on request	Rebuilds the whole deck in one designer-made style
Works on an existing deck	Yes, slide by slide	Yes	Yes: upload PPTX, PDF or DOCX
Decks we ran	Report, lecture, product deck	Report, lecture, product deck	Report, lecture, product deck
Text kept in our test	100% on control slides	About 22% on the report on 30 September, 100% on the rebuilt copy; 96% on the lecture and 100% on the product deck when asked to keep all text; 100% on the product deck with “Try a new design”	98% of the report on 30 September, all but the chart slide on 16 October; about 54% on the lecture’s control slides; 100% on the product deck’s, but one list came back as a picture
Tables, charts, images	Kept every chart and table figure and rearranged the slide around them; turned lists into SmartArt on the report and lecture; added stock photos	Report: both tables and the chart deleted on 30 September, all kept on the rebuilt copy. Lecture: charts deleted, tables turned into plain text. Product deck: all charts, the table and images kept with both prompts	Report: tables and chart kept, chart labels removed; a second run dropped the chart slide. Lecture: four slides dropped, three turned into pictures. Product deck: table kept; two charts redrawn as shapes, one shows no lines; list and roadmap turned into pictures
Time in our test	About 50 seconds to 1 minute per deck	About 50 seconds to 3 minutes	About 2 to 4 minutes
Price	Free in PowerPoint for the web; in desktop PowerPoint, included with a Microsoft 365 subscription	Microsoft 365 Personal $9.99/month, Family $12.99/month, Premium $19.99/month; Copilot Business add-on from $18/user/month (promotional, list price $21, annual billing)	Editable PPTX for a single deck: $4.99, no subscription; pack of 5 $14.99; Week Pass $7.99 for 7 days; plans from $12.99/month; Free: 3 presentations a month, up to 10 slides, PDF; prices vary by region
Main limits	One slide at a time; doesn’t restyle charts; needs internet and a built-in theme; mixed styles across slides	Results depend on the deck: can cut text or delete charts; AI credit limits on Personal and Family	Can drop slides, turn lists and charts into pictures or shapes and drop chart labels, so check every slide

Wonderslide is our product. We ran it through the same report, lecture and product deck, with the same checks.

Try it on your own deckUpload a PDF, DOCX or PPTX and get a designed presentation in a few minutes. Free plan, no card required.Try Wonderslide free

Test results

Deck 1: Quarterly support report

• Copilot (Make new design): every word stayed, and both tables and the chart kept every figure. The chart stayed a native, editable chart with all value labels. Copilot restyled all 12 slides in one teal palette, numbered the agenda and list items, and pulled key figures such as 18,420 tickets and +12% into large callouts. It took about 2 minutes.
• Designer: every word stayed, and both tables and the chart kept every figure. It changed all 12 slides, turned two lists into SmartArt, added stock photos to two slides and a video background to the last one. It took about a minute.
• Wonderslide: the text and both tables stayed, but the whole chart slide was dropped, so the deck came back with 11 of 12 slides. It took about 3 minutes.

Month	Tickets
Apr	5,210
May	5,480
Jun	5,750
Jul	5,890
Aug	6,420
Sep	6,110

Deck 2: University lecture

• Designer: every word stayed, but only list and text slides changed. Five bullet lists became SmartArt diagrams, and on one slide the text in a hexagon cluster was too small to read. The deck took about a minute.
• Copilot (“make a PPT with a new design, keep all text and graphics”): it kept 96% of the words (499 of 518). But both tables became plain lines of text, and both charts were deleted, even though the prompt asked to keep graphics. It took about 3 minutes.
• Wonderslide: the lecture came back with 8 of 12 slides. The slides on the law of demand (our paragraph control slide), the coffee demand schedule, market equilibrium with its equations and price elasticity are gone. Three slides came back as pictures you can’t edit. The remaining text kept its wording, so about 54% of the control-slide words survived (120 of 223). It took about 4 minutes.

Deck 3: Product overview

• Designer: all text on the control slides stayed. All three charts and the pricing table stayed as they were, and the table slide didn’t change at all. It added a stock photo to the title slide. The result mixed three different styles across slides. It took about 50 seconds.
• Copilot, “Try a new design”: every word on the control slides stayed. One line on the numbers slide was reworded. All three charts stayed editable with every value, and the table kept every figure in a new style. It took about 2 minutes.
• Copilot, “make a PPT with a new design, keep all text and graphics”: every word in the deck stayed, with no rewording. All three charts, the table and the three screenshots stayed in a new teal palette. It took about 2 minutes.
• Wonderslide: every word on the control slides is still there, but the seven-step list came back as one picture you can’t edit, regrouped into four steps. All figures and the table stayed, though table text shrank to 10 pt and three number labels were reworded. The line chart kept its data but shows no lines. The column and pie charts were redrawn as shapes, with month labels cut off and placeholder titles “column” and “pie” above them. The roadmap also became a picture, and two section slides were added. It took about 4 minutes.

How to use PowerPoint Designer

1. Open your presentation in PowerPoint for Microsoft 365, or in PowerPoint for the web with the file saved in OneDrive or SharePoint. Stay online.
2. Select a single slide.
3. Click Design Suggestions. In PowerPoint for Mac we found it on the Home tab; Microsoft’s guide also shows it on the Design tab.
4. Pick one of the layouts in the pane on the right. Your text stays the same, only the arrangement changes.
5. Repeat on the next slide.

It doesn’t restyle charts, only the slide around them. On a 20-slide deck you also get 20 rounds of choosing, and our slides ended up in three different styles.

How to ask Copilot in PowerPoint to redesign without rewriting your text

Tell Copilot what must not change, but check the result: on our lecture deck it deleted both charts despite the prompt. Here’s what we saw with three prompts:

• “Try a new design.” Microsoft says this changes the theme of the whole presentation. On our product deck, the only prompt we ran it on, it kept the text, charts and table and reworded one line.
• “Make a PPT with a new design, keep all text and graphics.” Kept everything on the product deck. On the lecture, 96% of the words stayed, but both charts were deleted.
• “Make new design.” With no instruction about text, Copilot kept about 22% of the report’s words.

The same prompt gave different results on different decks. Check every slide afterwards.

PowerPoint Designer not working: common causes

According to Microsoft’s Designer troubleshooting page and its Designer guide, these are the usual reasons:

• No Designer button: in desktop PowerPoint you need a Microsoft 365 subscription. PowerPoint for the web offers design suggestions without one.
• Button is grayed out: you selected more than one slide, or you’re offline.
• No ideas in the pane: the slide uses a custom theme instead of a built-in one, or a layout other than Title or Title and Content.
• Still nothing: Microsoft notes that PowerPoint can’t show ideas in all circumstances. In our test, Designer offered nothing for lecture slides converted from PDF, where charts were drawn with shapes.

Which one to use

• Fix one slide fast: use Designer. It doesn’t touch your words.
• Restyle the whole deck and keep the text: try Copilot with “Try a new design” or an explicit “keep all text and graphics”. It handled our product deck well but cut the report’s text and deleted the lecture’s charts. Designer mixed three styles in one deck. A redesign tool like Wonderslide restyles everything in one pass, but in our test it dropped slides on the lecture and turned lists and charts into pictures or shapes. Whatever you use, compare every slide with your original.
• Shorten a long deck: use Copilot without an instruction about text. Cutting text is what it did on our report.

For more options, see our comparison of Gamma alternatives with editable PPTX export.

Designer, Copilot or a redesign tool?

Designer polishes single slides. Copilot can restyle a whole deck, but how much it keeps depends on the file. Wonderslide is a redesign tool, not a PowerPoint replacement: the result opens and stays editable in PowerPoint, and it’s worth a check slide by slide like any AI output.

See pricing for one-time purchases and plans. If your file is a PDF and you only need slides back in PowerPoint, use the free PDF to PPT converter.