How to turn a report into a presentation

To turn a report into a presentation, work backwards from its conclusion. Write the verdict as the first content slide, give each key finding one slide with the finding stated as the title, turn each table into a chart of the single comparison it exists to show, and send the method, the full tables and the references to an appendix or a link. Most reports need eight to ten slides whatever their page count, because the count follows the number of findings, not the number of pages.

The reason is the difference between reading and listening. A reader controls the pace, skips the method and flips back to a table. A listener hears each sentence once, in the order you choose.

Start from the conclusion, not page one

Reports are usually written in the order the work happened: background, method, results, conclusion. That order suits a reader who can jump ahead. It does not suit a room.

Barbara Minto’s pyramid principle, taught in consulting firms for decades, says thinking is easiest to grasp when ideas are organised as a pyramid under a single point. For a presentation, that single point is the verdict, and it goes near the top. Australia’s Government Style Manual gives the same advice in plainer words: put the most important thing first, because readers may not reach the bottom.

The lessons learned deck shows it well. It closes a fictional warehouse system project that was planned for twenty weeks and took twenty six, and its second slide is a planned against actual table: duration, budget, scope and defects. Every later slide explains one of those rows. The deck’s last slide says the full forty page close report is on the project wiki, which is exactly where the detail belongs.

Pick the findings

Read the report’s executive summary and conclusions, and list every claim that a decision depends on. Most reports have three to six. Everything else is support.

Test each claim with one question: if the audience remembered only this, would they act differently? A finding that changes nothing is interesting and still belongs in the report rather than the deck.

The project status report is a useful document to practise on. It is five pages: status tiles, a summary naming asbestos as the cause of a nine day delay, progress by work package, a budget table, a spend chart, five risks and three decisions for the sponsor. As a presentation, the findings are three: the project is nine days behind and why, the forecast is over budget by a named amount, and three decisions are needed now.

One slide per finding, with the finding as the title

Give each finding a slide, and write the finding itself as the slide title in a full sentence. “Budget” is a label; “The overrun came from rework and a second test round” is a finding.

This is the assertion evidence approach developed at Penn State: build the talk on key messages written as sentence headlines, support each one with visual evidence rather than bullets, and put secondary detail in the notes. The lessons learned deck follows it closely. Its budget slide is a bridge from the approved figure to the final spend with each overrun named, and its causes slide is a fishbone with causes on the bones and no names.

Turn tables into charts, and keep the tables

A report table is built to be looked up. A slide chart is built to make one point. Find the comparison each table exists to show and chart only that.

The quarterly business review deck does this with a scorecard of seven metrics, three of them behind plan, then a single revenue and churn chart that explains the misses. The rest of the numbers stay in the scorecard. Choosing the right chart for the claim is covered in how to present data in slides.

Do not throw the tables away. Put them in appendix slides after the closing slide, where they are available when somebody asks and invisible when nobody does. Storytelling with Data’s Amy Esselman makes the case for exactly that split: keep live slides sparse, and move detailed tables to an appendix for anyone who needs the precise values.

Write the recommendations as instructions

Reports often end with observations: “data quality was lower than assumed”. A presentation should end with instructions: “profile the data before the plan is priced”.

The lessons learned deck turns its five lessons into instructions for the next project and then shows, on the following slide, the changes already made to the method, as a was and now comparison. The investor update deck does something similar at a smaller scale, ending on four asks each answerable in ten minutes. Either way, the audience leaves with something to do.

Keep the report’s wording in the notes

The sentences you cut from the slides are not wasted. Move them into the speaker notes for the slide they belonged to, so the exact figure, the caveat and the name of the data source are in front of you when a question comes.

Keep each note short enough to glance at: the finding, the evidence you must not misquote, and the sentence that leads to the next slide. If a finding carries a legal or financial qualification, write that one out in full and say it as written.

Then plan the time. A fifteen minute steering group update on the project status report is about six slides: the verdict, the delay and its cause, the budget forecast, the top risks, the three decisions and a close. Each slide gets about two minutes of talk, which leaves room for the questions that a report presentation always attracts. If the slot is shorter, cut a finding rather than speeding through all of them.

Common mistakes

• Presenting the report’s order. Background for ten minutes loses the room before the first finding.
• Paragraphs on slides. The audience reads ahead of you and stops listening.
• One slide per report section. A two paragraph introduction and a four page findings chapter do not deserve equal time.
• Every table as a table. Nobody can read a twelve column table on a screen.
• No appendix. Without one, the first detailed question sends you scrolling through the report on the projector.

Build it

There are two ways in. Paste the executive summary and the findings into the prompt box, which takes up to 8,000 characters, so a short report often fits without its appendices; see slides from text. Or attach the report itself with Build from files: up to five files of 25 MB each, as PDF, plain text or images, on the Starter plan and up. Up to 50,000 characters are read from each file, attachments are read for their text only, and a Word file has to be exported to PDF first because .docx is not accepted. The PDF to presentation page covers that path.

The guide to turning a document into a presentation shows the steps from attaching the file to exporting. Slide sources are never printed on the slides, so if a finding needs a citation, add it to the slide text or the notes yourself. If the report’s owner will keep editing the deck in PowerPoint, the difference between the two PowerPoint exports matters, and editable PPTX or image PPTX explains it.