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How to Connect Google Slides to ChatGPT?

Published September 9, 2026 · Written by Aanart

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Contents

  1. 1Before you start
  2. 2Connect Google Slides to SourcetoMCP
  3. 3Add SourcetoMCP as a connector in ChatGPT
  4. 4Ask ChatGPT about your decks
  5. 5Building a deck from one template slide
  6. 6A note on write actions
  7. 7Troubleshooting
  8. 8Revoking access
  9. 9Still stuck?

This is a two-part setup: first link Google Slides to SourcetoMCP, then add SourcetoMCP itself as a custom app inside ChatGPT's developer mode. You pick decks one at a time rather than granting access to a whole Drive, so ChatGPT only ever opens the presentations you named. For everything it can add, move or restyle on a slide, see the Google Slides MCP server page.

Before you start

You need a SourcetoMCP account with a brand created, a Google account with edit rights on the decks in question, and a ChatGPT account on a Pro, Plus, Business, Enterprise or Education plan. Custom MCP connectors run through developer mode, which works on ChatGPT on the web only.

Connect Google Slides to SourcetoMCP

  1. 1From your dashboard, go to Connectors → Add a connection.
  2. 2Find the Google Slides card and select Connect.
  3. 3Sign in with the Google account that can open the decks you want. SourcetoMCP asks for Google's drive.file permission, which covers individual files you choose and nothing else in your Drive.
  4. 4Select + Choose presentations from Google Drive. The picker is Google's own, running with Google's temporary access, which is why it can show a list we could never fetch ourselves.
  5. 5Confirm. Each presentation becomes its own entry on your Connections page.

Add SourcetoMCP as a connector in ChatGPT

  1. 1In SourcetoMCP, open Connect an agent from the dashboard sidebar and copy your server address (it looks like https://sourcetomcp.com/api/mcp).
  2. 2In ChatGPT, open Settings, then Security and login, and turn on Developer mode. Custom MCP connectors sit behind this toggle, and it only appears on ChatGPT on the web.
  3. 3Open the Plugins menu and select the “+” button to create a developer-mode app.
  4. 4Enter the name SourcetoMCP, paste in your server address, and pick OAuth as the authentication type.
  5. 5Save. The app now sits under Drafts in your app settings, where you can switch individual tools on or off.
  6. 6The first time ChatGPT calls it, you'll be asked to sign in to SourcetoMCP and approve access, the same OAuth approval you'd see connecting any other app. After that it reconnects on its own.

Ask ChatGPT about your decks

A developer-mode app stays off until you pick it. In a chat, open the Plus menu, choose Developer mode, and select SourcetoMCP for that conversation.

ChatGPT can list the elements on a slide, read speaker notes, and pull a thumbnail to see how a slide looks before it changes anything. Asking for the thumbnail first is worth the extra step on a deck you did not build yourself. Try something like:

  1. 1Show me a thumbnail of slide 3 and list what is on it.
  2. 2Read the speaker notes across the deck and tell me what is missing.
  3. 3Group the three logos on slide 6 and centre them.
  4. 4Give every section divider the same background colour.

Building a deck from one template slide

Design a single slide the way you want it, with placeholder text like {{client}} and {{quarter}}. Ask ChatGPT to duplicate it once per client and replace the placeholders on each copy. Fonts, layout and brand colours carry over untouched, because duplicating a real slide keeps its styling rather than rebuilding it. Approve the duplication step first and the replacements second, so you can see the deck take shape before the text goes in.

A note on write actions

27 of the 31 Slides operations change the deck, and the change lands in the Google file with no undo on our side. Google's version history under File then Version history is the way back. Worth knowing before you ask for a restyle: brightness, contrast and cropping are read-only in Google's own Slides API, so ChatGPT can change an image's outline but cannot recolour or crop it, even though the Slides editor lets you do that by hand.

Troubleshooting

The deck isn't in the picker: the picker only lists files the signed-in Google account can already open. Share the presentation with that account in Google Drive first, then reopen the picker.

Developer mode is missing from Settings: it is available on Pro, Plus, Business, Enterprise and Education accounts, and only on ChatGPT on the web. The mobile apps do not show it.

ChatGPT edited the wrong shape: shapes are addressed by id, not by what they look like. Ask it to list the elements on that slide first, then name the one you mean.

ChatGPT says it can't find the tool or has no data: open the app's details page and use Refresh to pull the current tool list from the server. If that changes nothing, check the deck still shows under Active connections in SourcetoMCP.

Revoking access

Worth doing before a deck goes out: drop it from your Connections page once the work is finished, so a presentation you are about to share externally is no longer reachable by an agent. Turning Developer mode off in ChatGPT hides every custom app at once without deleting any of them.

Still stuck?

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