Tuesday's Tip #52: Tricks for Sharing Your Screen in a Teams Meeting

Tricks for Sharing your Screen in your Teams Meeting

Whether you've been attending Teams meetings for a long time or you're new to it, there's a couple things that trip people up consistently. These 3 tricks will help you. I would encourage you to watch the video as I've included some additional tips for sharing.

Trick #1 - The difference between sharing your screen versus your window

Sharing your Desktop - means whatever is on your desktop - if you see it - they see it. Although this offers the most flexibility, it also runs the biggest risk you might accidently share something you don't want everyone to see.  

Use this if..

• You know you have multiple screens you want people to see, for example a spreadsheet and a word doc.
• You have closed all private or personal windows including Outlook so screen tips don't come up.  You may also want to disable notifications/chats.

Sharing a Window

What most people don't realize about sharing a window is that if you open another window - your meeting participants won't see it. They won't see what you see - ONLY the 1 window you shared. For example, if you shared your excel window and then switch to a word doc - they will still see the Excel window and won't be able to see the Word doc. You will need to share that window separately or instead share your desktop.

Use this if...

• You only have a single file to share with meeting participants, for example a spreadsheet.
• You have other windows open that you want to be sure people DON'T see.

Trick #2 - Presenting a PowerPoint in Presentation Mode

If you are presenting PowerPoints in a Teams meeting - you want to make sure that the meeting participants are seeing the presentation - and not your notes. There's an easy way to do this.

First - what not to do - don't open PowerPoint and share your window or desktop.

Instead, browse to the PowerPoint presentation using the Browse or PowerPoint area of your share tray. This will ensure you only see the presentation mode of your PowerPoint.

Trick #3 - Let Participants Navigate Your PowerPoint Presentation

There is a little known trick when sharing PowerPoint presentations that as the host, you can enable or disable the ability for your meeting participants to navigate your presentation themselves. There are pros and cons and you may want to do this in some meetings, while not in others.

The Pro Side.  If you're giving a presentation and a meeting participant want to see the last slide that had a graph on it - instead of interrupting you to go back to the previous slide - you can give them the ability to self navigate. 

The Con Side.  If you're giving a presentation and meeting participants aren't paying attention and don't know what slide you're on - they may get lost and you may lose their attention or there may be unnecessary questions later. It does, however let users get back to where you are easily.

As the Presenter

When you are presenting a PowerPoint, this feature is enabled when you see the "eye". It means all meeting participants can go back and forth in your presentation. This is a simple toggle, so one click turns it off, the next turns it on.

If you have this feature disabled and you do not want to allow users to self navigate your PowerPoint presentation, you will have the "eye" with the line through it.

As the Meeting Participant

If you are attending a meeting where this feature has been enabled, you will know if you see this mini toolbar in your presentation.

As you navigate the presentation, you can easily see what slide the presenter is on and click the To Presenter button to return to the slide they have displayed.