Claude Levels Up: PowerPoint File Support and New File Creation Capabilities

In a head-to-head comparison of file handling across AI chat products back in August (video link in the comments), I was surprised to learn that Claude could not handle PPTX (PowerPoint) files. These types of strange gotchas pop up from time to time as unwanted points of differentiation between the various services.

However, with a recent update Claude is able to work with more types of files and can now also accept PPTX input. On top of this it can create files, working similarly to what we might have already experienced with ChatGPT or Copilot.

One of my takeaways from my earlier testing though was that Claude tended to be better at dealing with embedded images (in PDFs for example) than competitors (ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini). However, the implementation of PowerPoint file understanding is now based on markdown conversion, which means this same type of understanding does not translate to this file type. This is a shame, as Claude's more visual approach was something that allowed it to stand out in working with documents comprised of both visual and textual content.

First posted on Linkedin on 10/16/2025 -> View Linkedin post here