Rebuilding the same report every month with ChatGPT in Excel and PowerPoint

Frame the report before touching the AI

If you open ChatGPT and type "make me a nice report", you get something generic and unusable: your report follows rules the AI cannot guess. Before automating anything, lock down the structure.

Concrete tool: a plain text document (Notion, Word, an email to yourself). No cost.

Setup (about 30 minutes the first time):

1. Pull up the last report you sent, the real one, the one your client received.
2. List its blocks in the exact order, with the format of each figure.
3. Note where each piece of data comes from: which export, which tab, which column. This is the boring part, and it is what makes the rest hold.

For the made-up agency, the recipe fits in a table:

The same table gets filled differently elsewhere. A freelancer in finance would put the month's cash position and overdue invoices in it, an online shop owner would put sales by product and return rate.

Here is the brief template to keep in your document, which you will paste into ChatGPT in the next steps:

Monthly report for [client name]. Blocks, in this order:
1. [block 1]: [format], source [export, tab, column]
2. [block 2]: [format], source [export, tab, column]
Summary commentary: [length, tone].

Expected outcome: a page that describes your report like a recipe. Without it, the add-in suggests a different format every time you run it, and you spend more time fixing than saving.

Install ChatGPT inside Excel and PowerPoint

Both add-ins open in a panel to the right of your file. You write in plain language and they act on the open document.

Concrete tool: Microsoft 365 (Excel and PowerPoint, app or web) and the ChatGPT add-in. On the ChatGPT side, the Plus plan costs around 20 dollars a month according to this plan comparison, price taken from a third-party comparison read on November 1, 2026. Prices move, so look at the official page before you subscribe. Business is billed per user, Enterprise by quote.

Setup (about 10 minutes):

1. In Excel, open Insert then Get Add-ins (menus vary with your version).
2. Search for "ChatGPT", install the add-in, then connect your OpenAI account.
3. Do the same in PowerPoint.

Expected outcome: a chat panel inside both tools, with no back-and-forth to your browser.

Fill and calculate the Excel file

Instead of copy-pasting columns and writing formulas by hand, you describe the calculation you want and the add-in lays it down. According to its announcement, it fixes formulas and cleans up inconsistent data. I have no source on how much data it handles, so test it on your own export before you rely on it.

Concrete tool: the add-in in Excel, on the raw export from your billing tool, your analytics or your shop.

Setup (about 10 minutes):

1. Open your export in Excel and select the relevant range.
2. In the panel, give a precise instruction, like the first prompt below.
3. Check the result, then ask for an adjustment, like the second prompt.

In a new sheet, calculate [the measure: visits, revenue, inquiries] by [the segment: channel, client, product] for [the current month], compare it with [the reference period] and show the gap as a percentage with one decimal.

Sort from the largest [segment] to the smallest and turn negative gaps red.

Expected outcome: a summary sheet along the lines of this one (made-up figures):

The add-in explains the formulas it lays down, so someone else can read them and take over if the format changes. In the agency example, the copy-paste part, the longest of the hour, becomes proofreading.

Generate the PowerPoint from the data

Once your Excel is clean, you move to the deck. The PowerPoint add-in creates, edits and reorganizes slides from what you give it, including the summary sheet you just built. Two precautions. The add-in is in beta and OpenAI warns it can delete content by mistake, so work on a copy of the file. Complex formatting and custom fonts are not fully supported either.

Concrete tool: the add-in in PowerPoint, your summary sheet from step 3 and the recipe from step 1.

Setup (about 10 minutes):

1. Open a copy of your usual reporting template, or a blank PowerPoint, and launch the panel.
2. Give the brief, like the first prompt below.
3. Then adjust slide by slide, with the other two.

Create a monthly reporting deck in [number] slides: [the list of slides, in the order of your recipe]. Use the figures from the sheet [name of your summary sheet].

Lighten slide [number], it is too dense: switch it to three columns.

Rewrite the title of slide 1 so it mentions [the month] and [the year].

Expected outcome: a structured, filled deck that you proofread slide by slide. The time saved depends mostly on the deck template you provide, so I am not giving you a figure.

Connect the sources and turn it into a ritual

The announcements mention an integration with Gmail, Outlook and SharePoint. I do not rely on it here: I have not checked that it fetches an export from a shared folder by itself. In this recipe, the person running the ritual drops the export in place. What saves time is that everything else is written down.

Concrete tool: a shared folder (OneDrive, SharePoint, Drive) and a recurring reminder in the calendar.

Setup (about 15 minutes):

1. Store each source export in the same place, under the same file name from one month to the next, for example traffic-export-client.xlsx.
2. Put the recipe from step 1 in the same folder.
3. Set a reminder on the first working day of the month: "Monthly report". The person opens Excel, runs the prompt from step 3, then the one from step 4, proofreads everything and sends.

Expected outcome: an identical format from one month to the next, because the recipe is locked. The day the usual person is away, anyone on the team picks up the ritual with the same recipe.