Chapter 11 — The Office Suite: Word, Excel, PPT

The office suite is where most people first feel WorkBuddy's value.

This chapter focuses on the three most common office deliverables: Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PPT reports.

The Common Workflow for the Office Suite

Whatever the document type, first break the task into five questions. Many "AI did a bad job" office tasks stem not from the model's inability to write, but from the person not stating the delivery standard clearly.

Question	What to make clear	Example
Goal	Whose decision this material helps make	For the department lead, to judge whether to keep investing in the project.
Audience	Who reads it, and do they know the background	Execs only want conclusions; the project team needs process and owners.
Material	Which files are the source of truth, which are just reference	data.xlsx is the only data source of truth; the old PPT is only structural reference.
Format	Word, Excel, PPT, or all three linked	Output a project review Word, a risk-ledger Excel, an 8-page report PPT.
Acceptance	How to judge the result usable	Numbers trace back to source, table formulas refresh, PPT doesn't overflow when projected.

Pick the Right Skill First: Recommended Combos for Office Tasks

SkillHub has many skills for office productivity, document handling, spreadsheet handling, PPT generation and meeting minutes.

Skill name	Good for	How it's used here	Watch out
Word / DOCX	Word docs	Create, check, edit DOCX; handle headings, numbering, tables, track changes.	Suited for local docx files.
Excel / XLSX	Excel sheets	Read, clean, write workbooks; handle formulas, dates, formats, keep templates.	Confirm the data source of truth first.
Powerpoint / PPTX	PPT files	Create, edit, check PPTX; layouts, placeholders, notes, charts, visual QA.	Suited when you need an editable PPTX.
Office Document Specialist Suite	Word / Excel / PPT	Comprehensive Office file handling for automated reports and multi-file linking.	For complex tasks, accept step by step.
wps	WPS suite	For Chinese users on WPS Office workflows — Writer, Spreadsheets, Presentation.	For WPS-ecosystem users.
Tencent Docs TENCENT DOCS	Online doc collaboration	Create, read, edit, search Tencent Docs — online Word, Excel, Slides.	Usually needs API key or auth.
kdocs skill	Kingsoft Docs / WPS cloud docs	Handle WPS cloud docs, smart docs, sheets, PPT, PDF, knowledge base.	Usually needs API key.
Markdown Converter	Material parsing	Convert PDF, Word, PPT, Excel to Markdown so the model understands content first.	Good for reading material, not final layout.
PPT Generator / PPT Workflow	PPT generation	Auto-generate decks from topics, scripts or material; good for drafts and structured reports.	Still needs human review after.
PowerPoint Automation	PPT batch edit & export	Read outline, export PDF/images, replace text, unify fonts and themes.	Better on Windows + PowerPoint/WPS.
Excel Formula Generator	Formula problems	Turn natural language into Excel/WPS/Google Sheets formulas, with error-proof versions explained.	Validate formulas on sample data.
Tencent Meeting	Meeting to doc	Book meetings, get transcripts, get AI minutes, then turn into Word minutes, Excel todos, PPT report.	Needs meeting-platform auth.

A practical pairing idea: for local files prefer Word / DOCX, Excel / XLSX, Powerpoint / PPTX; for online collaboration prefer Tencent Docs or kdocs skill; when material is heavy, first use Markdown Converter to extract structure; for meeting-type office flows, add Tencent Meeting or a minutes-style Skill.

Word: From a Blank Page to a Formal Document

The Pain in This Scene

Word looks like just writing, but real office difficulty usually has four sources: not knowing what structure to write in, tone not formal enough, headings and numbering in chaos, content with no source of evidence.

Especially for plans, notices, reports, minutes, policies, applications, PRDs — if you let the AI freestyle from the start, the result is often a "universal template": reads complete, but hard to submit directly.

What WorkBuddy is good at isn't "deciding for you" — it's turning existing material into a document draft with stable structure, consistent tone, that you can keep editing.

State the document goal, recipient, tone and structure requirements all at once; after generating, use differential feedback to keep editing rather than regenerating from scratch each time.

Tasks Suited for Word

• Formal plans: event planning, project plans, marketing plans, training plans.
• Management docs: policies, notices, applications, meeting minutes, review reports, weekly/monthly reports.
• Product material: PRDs, requirement specs, competitive analysis, user-interview summaries.

Recommended Flow

Step	What WorkBuddy does	What the human confirms
1	Read material, list available info and gaps.	Which material is the source of truth, which is reference.
2	Generate the doc outline and writing stance.	Who the reader is; whether it's for reporting, approval or execution.
3	Generate the Word draft per the outline.	Heading hierarchy, section order, whether key info is complete.
4	Polish, add, cut based on feedback.	What can be finalized, what must be marked "TBD".
5	Output an editable docx and a change note.	Whether it can go straight to a colleague for review.

Prompt Example: Generate a Team-Building Plan in Word

Generate a Word document framework for a company team-building activity plan.
About 80 people; include: activity goals, theme suggestions, overall schedule (with time nodes), grouping and game suggestions, budget breakdown, staffing, risk plan and notes.
Keep the language concise and practical — no need to be overly detailed; focus on laying out the overall framework and key decision items, ready to take to leadership to confirm direction.

Second-Round Edits: Don't Rewrite, State the Differences

Edit the previous team-building plan Word doc — don't regenerate the whole thing.
Edits required:
Compress the activity goals to 3 items, each under 50 characters;
Turn the schedule into a table with columns: time, segment, main content, owner, materials needed;
Add interactive segments suited to a 100-person company in the program suggestions, and drop the too-hard-to-execute ones;
Detail the budget further: item, estimated amount, quantity, unit price, notes, and add a total;
Add a risk plan covering late arrivals, equipment failure, program overruns and sudden safety issues;
Make the overall tone more formal and concise, ready to submit to leadership for approval.
Output the revised v2 Word doc, and list this round's changes in changelog.md.

Advanced Practice: Compare Two Versions of a Policy, Contract or Plan

Compare policy-v3.docx and policy-v4.docx.
Output four diff categories — added, deleted, modified, format-only — with section and source location.
Flag amounts, dates, responsible parties, approval conditions, exceptions and negations.
Produce an impact list and open questions. No legal conclusions. Don't modify the originals.

Document comparison is good for spotting changes, not a substitute for legal, finance or the policy owner's final judgment.

Excel: Turn a Spreadsheet Into Analysis That Answers Questions

The Pain in This Scene

Excel's problem usually isn't "can it make charts", it's "what question can this table actually answer".

Many sheets mix dates, text, blanks, merged cells, multiple source-of-truth versions and ad-hoc notes. Have the AI analyze it directly and you easily get charts that look professional but carry no business value.

Recommend importing the Excel or CSV first, then state the analysis metrics, chart type, stat dimensions, time range and whether a report is needed. Order matters: define the business question first, then pick the chart — don't generate pretty charts first.

Tasks Suited for Excel

• Data cleaning: dedupe, fill blanks, unify date formats, split fields, merge tables.
• Business analysis: sales, margin, conversion, ARPU, renewal, inventory turn.
• Report generation: weekly/monthly reports, budget execution, attendance summary, project progress ledger.
• Formula help: generate or explain complex formulas, troubleshoot #N/A, #VALUE!, circular refs.
• Visualization: bar, line, pie, pivot, dashboard, anomaly markers.

Recommended Flow

Stage	Prompt focus	Output
Read table	Describe the workbook structure, field meanings, sample rows and obvious dirty data first.	Data dictionary, issue list.
Define metrics	State the business question to answer, not just "analyze it".	Metric definition table.
Clean	State how to handle blanks, duplicates, outliers.	Cleaned xlsx / csv.
Compute	Generate formulas, pivots or stat tables, keeping a refreshable structure.	Summary table, formula notes.
Visualize	Pick charts by business question; avoid chart clutter.	Charts, analysis conclusions.

Prompt Example: Sales Data Analysis

Read 电商销售数据.xlsx — don't modify the original.
Business question: analyze this month's sales performance and profitability across product lines; judge which contribute most and which are weak on profit; and spot abnormal swings in this month's sales.
Output:
Explain the data fields; check missing values, duplicate records, outliers and field-format issues;
Per product line, calculate sales, gross profit, gross margin, sales share and gross-profit share, and rank them;
Daily aggregate sales and gross margin; analyze the day-to-day change this month; if the data span and completeness allow, add weekly stats;
Bar chart comparing each product line's sales and gross profit; line chart of daily sales this month;
Identify dates or records with clearly abnormal sales, margin or per-order amount; explain the abnormality with the data — don't speculate on business causes without basis;
Summarize the best-performing product line this month, the ones needing attention, and 3 conclusions directly usable for a business review.
Output output/sales-analysis.xlsx and output/summary.md.
Requirements: keep original data; the stats process and formulas are traceable; chart titles state the main conclusion directly; causes that can't be confirmed from the data are marked "to verify" — don't fabricate.

Advanced Practice: Multi-Table Merge, Reconciliation and Exception List

The most valuable basic-office work isn't "make a chart" — it's exposing the data source of truth and anomalies:

Merge the 6 regional weekly sales sheets in input/sales.
First check column names, data types, date ranges, currency and primary keys; if inconsistent, stop and list the differences.
Dedupe by order number but keep the duplicate sources; before aggregating, output total rows, blanks, outliers and duplicate counts.
Produce clean-sales.xlsx, exception-list.xlsx and reconciliation.md.
Amount totals must reconcile with each source sheet's totals; if the difference isn't 0, don't produce management conclusions.

Acceptance: input totals, cleaning changes and output totals are conserved; formulas recompute; anomalies aren't silently deleted; fields used by charts match the summary table.

PPT: Not Filling a Template, but Turning Material Into Narrative

The Pain in This Scene

PPT is the most easily misused.

Many people write the task as "make me a high-end PPT", so the AI can only guess the style and produce a pile of pretty empty talk. A genuinely usable PPT must first answer three questions: who's this report for, what decision should they make after, and how much time do you have to present.

PPT generation stresses providing material, page count, audience and style preference together. For WorkBuddy, a PPT Skill can handle page generation, but the storyline must be confirmed first. Otherwise the prettier the pages, the more they cover up logic problems.

Tasks Suited for PPT

• Project reports: progress, phase review, milestone plan, risks and resource asks.
• Business reports: monthly business analysis, sales review, budget execution, growth review.
• Training decks: new-hire training, product training, customer training, internal sharing.
• Proposal decks: client proposals, bid material, business plans, product launches.

Recommended Flow

Step	What WorkBuddy does	What the human confirms
1	Turn Word, Excel, images, old PPT into a material summary.	What must stay, what can go.
2	Generate a 6–10 page storyline and per-page titles.	Audience, duration, decision goal.
3	Build the PPT from the confirmed outline.	Whether each page has only one core point.
4	Add charts, notes, source mapping and export versions.	Whether key numbers come from Excel.
5	Layout check: text overflow, missing images, font sizes, colors.	Readable when projected, fit for live presentation.

Prompt Example: Build a Report PPT From a Material Pack

From the current workspace material, build an AI Agent topic-sharing PPT of up to 8 pages.
Audience: business and management people with basic AI awareness but no Agent knowledge.
Duration: 10 minutes.

Goal: let the audience understand what an AI Agent is, how it differs from a normal AI chat tool, what problems it solves, and how an enterprise should judge whether it's worth adopting.
Material:
AI术语全景手册.md is the main content material;
don't add facts and data beyond the workspace material.
Keep the whole thing to 8 pages, one core conclusion per page;
cases, data and key judgments must cite the material source; don't fill in unconfirmable content;
PPT titles should state the point directly — no vague titles like "AI Agent Intro" or "Use Cases";
output output/ai-agent.pptx;
after generating, check text overflow, whitespace, chart scope, missing images, font consistency and page numbers.

Overall style: professional, concise, tech-feel but no excessive gradients, glows or decorative elements — fit for formal sharing and internal reporting.

The Suite Linked: Auto-Build a Delivery Pack After a Meeting

Many office tasks aren't a single file — they're "after the meeting there has to be something".

For example, after a product review meeting, there's user feedback, feature decisions, action items and the next-version plan. The manual flow is usually: write minutes, then add a PRD, then make a task sheet, then a report PPT.

WorkBuddy's value is chaining these deliverables onto one chain of truth.

Scene Pain

• Meeting talk is colloquial; resolutions, disagreements and action items are mixed together.
• A PRD needs structure, but the minutes have no standard format.
• An Excel task sheet needs owner, due date and status fields — can't just be a summary paragraph.
• A PPT report is for the boss — can't dump the whole meeting transcript in.

Usable Skill Combos

Stage	Recommended Skill	Role
Get meeting content	Tencent Meeting / smart-minutes Skill	Get transcript, AI minutes, resolutions, action items.
Generate PRD	Word / DOCX, Tencent Docs, kdocs skill	Rewrite meeting content into a PRD.
Generate task sheet	Excel / XLSX, Excel/WPS sheet automation tools	Output owner, due date, priority, status, acceptance.
Generate report	Powerpoint / PPTX, PPT Workflow, PPT Generator	Turn PRD and task progress into a management report.

Prompt Example: Meeting to PRD, Task Sheet, Report

Read this product review meeting's transcript and AI minutes, and generate an office delivery pack.
Goal: turn the meeting content into material that can drive R&D.
Output:
1. Word: output/feature-prd.docx — background, target users, core problem, requirement list, flow description, acceptance criteria, risks and open questions;
2. Excel: output/action-items.xlsx — fields: item, owner, priority, due date, dependency, status, acceptance criteria;
3. PPT: output/review-summary.pptx — up to 6 pages, for management, highlighting this meeting's resolutions, resource asks and risks.
Constraints:
- Don't write anything not explicitly confirmed in the meeting as a settled conclusion;
- Names, dates, feature scope must keep their source;
- If owner or time is missing, mark TBD;
- Output the outline and task-sheet field preview first; generate files after I confirm.

Common Mistakes and Fixes

Common mistake	Why it happens	Better wording
"Make me a PPT, make it high-end"	No audience, goal or material constraint.	State audience, duration, page count, decision goal, reference template and must-keep data.
"Analyze this Excel"	No business question; the model can only summarize vaguely.	State what question to answer, which metrics, what dimensions to compare.
"Write a report"	No doc type or tone requirement.	State whether it's a plan, summary, application, minutes or PRD, and name the reader.
"Do it all automatically, don't ask me"	Key definitions unconfirmed; risk amplifies.	Let WorkBuddy output the material list, risk list and outline first; confirm before generating.
"Merge this pile of material into one file"	No distinction between fact, reference and TBD.	Specify the single data source, reference files and fields that can't be fabricated.