Ask for the finished file. Get the finished file.

It’s Thursday night. The board deck is due Friday morning, the numbers live in three places, and you have asked an AI chat for help. It gave you a lovely outline. Slide one: title. Slide two: key metrics. Now you get to open PowerPoint, copy every line across, fix the fonts, rebuild the chart by hand and check that the totals still add up. The AI did the easy ten minutes. You still have the two hours.

Most people looking for an AI that makes PowerPoint decks and spreadsheets want the file, not a description of the file. That’s what Bob does. Ask him for a deck, a document, a spreadsheet or a PDF, and he builds it on his own computer and posts the finished file in the thread. You open it, read it, and send it on.

What an AI that makes decks and spreadsheets should hand you

Here is what you can ask Bob for today, in Slack or in the HeyBob app on Mac, Windows or Linux.

• Decks. A PowerPoint file with real slides, ready to open, present or edit.
• Documents. A Word file: a proposal, a policy, a one-pager, meeting minutes written up properly.
• Spreadsheets. An Excel workbook with working formulas, and the numbers already showing.
• PDFs. A report or handout that looks the same on every screen.
• Charts. Drawn from your actual numbers, not sketched from memory.
• Pictures. A header graphic, an illustration or a mockup, or a change to a picture someone posted.
• Spoken audio. A voiceover, an audio version of a write-up, or a short two-voice dialogue.

The files go straight into the Slack thread, so everyone there can open them without signing in to anything. A file over 25 MB, or one Slack won’t take, comes as a link instead.

Spreadsheets that show their numbers

There’s a quiet way spreadsheets made by software go wrong. The formulas are in the file, but nothing has worked them out yet. Open it in some apps, or in a preview on your phone, and the totals column is blank. It looks broken, even though it isn’t.

Bob checks for this. Before he sends a workbook, he calculates its formulas so every cell shows its value the moment you open it. The formulas stay in place, so when you change a number, the totals still update. If a workbook can’t be calculated for some reason, he still sends it and tells you plainly to open it in a spreadsheet app to see the values. He doesn’t leave you guessing why a column is empty.

Pictures: new ones, or a change to yours

Ask for a picture and say what it should show. Bob makes it in one of four shapes: square, landscape, portrait or wide. He can make up to four in one request.

He can also change a picture. Post one in the thread, say “make the background a warm grey” or “put our logo on the mug”, and he sends back the edited version. He can do the same with one he made earlier in the same request. A few limits worth knowing:

• He can change PNG, JPEG and WebP pictures, up to 10 MB each.
• He can’t make a transparent background yet. He offers a plain white one instead.
• Short words inside a picture work. Long passages of text in a picture tend to come out wrong.

One thing he won’t do is draw a chart of your real data as a picture. A picture maker invents what it draws, and that’s the last thing you want in a sales chart. For charts, he builds them from the numbers themselves, so the bars match the figures.

A script, read out loud

Sometimes the finished thing is audio. A voiceover for a product walkthrough. The weekly update as something people can play on the drive in. A short back-and-forth between two voices for a training clip.

Give Bob the script, or ask him to write one, and he turns it into a single MP3 in the thread. One voice for a narration, several for a dialogue, chosen from a set of 21. You can steer how a line is said, a whisper or a laugh before the words, and a new line in the script makes a natural pause.

The limits: one clip holds up to 4,000 characters and up to eight lines, and he can make three clips in one request. A longer script gets split into shorter clips. If a workspace’s setup can’t make audio, Bob says so and offers the script as text.

A page that links to the file

Bob can also build a page: a dashboard, a report, a live view your team opens from a link. Now that page can carry the files too. Ask for a weekly report page with the full deck and the spreadsheet behind it, and the page links to both. Only people who can open the page can download them.

Pages can link PowerPoint decks, Word documents, Excel workbooks and PDFs. If a file someone asked for can’t go on the page, Bob says so in his reply and offers another way to get it. He doesn’t quietly leave it out and call the job done.

Nothing he made gets lost

Bob does a lot of work on the way to a finished file: a draft, a cleaned-up copy of your data, a chart he dropped into the deck. HeyBob keeps every file he makes or changes during a job, not only the one he sends you. That holds even when a job is stopped partway, runs out of time or fails. The work behind the finished file is saved with that job.

What it costs

Making files comes out of the same credits as the rest of Bob’s work. Pictures are charged per picture, and audio by how many characters are spoken. The receipt for each job shows its credits. If a picture or a clip fails, it isn’t charged. If you’re trying HeyBob, the trial is $100 of work on us. The pricing page has the details.

Honest limits

• Read before you send. Like any AI, Bob can get a number or a fact wrong. Check a deck before it goes to the board.
• Some decks may not open cleanly. When Bob thinks one might not, the receipt says so.
• He needs the information. A deck is only as good as what goes into it. Give him the numbers, attach the files, or connect the apps where they live.
• Files you send him have limits too. Up to 10 files and 10 MB in all per message. Files and attachments has the full list.

Common questions

What kinds of files can Bob make?

PowerPoint decks, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, charts built from your numbers, new pictures, edits to a picture someone posted, and spoken audio from a script in one voice or several. He posts the finished file in the thread or in your chat with him in the HeyBob app.

Do the formulas in Bob’s spreadsheets show their values?

Yes. Before Bob sends a workbook, he calculates its formulas so the cells show numbers when you open it, and the formulas stay in place. If a workbook cannot be calculated, he sends it anyway and tells you to open it in a spreadsheet app to see the values.

Can Bob edit a picture I send him?

Yes. Post a PNG, JPEG or WebP picture up to 10 MB and say what to change. He cannot make a transparent background yet; he offers a plain white one instead. He can make up to four pictures in one request.

How long can a voiceover be?

One clip holds up to 4,000 characters and up to eight lines, in one voice or several. Bob can make up to three clips in one request, so a longer script is split into shorter clips.

Does making files cost extra?

Files come out of the same credits as the rest of Bob’s work. Pictures and audio are charged per picture and by the characters spoken, and the receipt shows the credits. A clip or picture that fails is not charged.

Try it on the next file you were dreading

Pick the deck, the workbook or the write-up you were going to build by hand this week, and ask Bob for it instead. Add Bob to Slack or get the HeyBob app, describe what you need, and open the file when it lands. For the bigger picture, read Pages or apps: what Bob builds or Bob with Microsoft Excel.