How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?

“Can you go to the next slide please”

Does this sound familiar?
This happens mostly when people want to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting from 1 computer but with multiple presenters.

I totally understand some logic behind this as you do not want to have a cut-over phase during the meeting, especially with recorded meetings, where presenters are switching presentations.

But there is another way, IMHO the best way for these kind of situations (but also good in any other situation as well where you want to share a PowerPoint presentation). I’m not sure if everyone is aware of this feature yet, but I hope it will change after reading this blog! I will come back on this but first, let’s explore the options that are mostly being used in the meetings I joined.

Microsoft Teams Share Screen

Let’s start with the “share screen” option:

From the “Share screen” menu, you will have 2 options to choose from (“Desktop” and “Window”).

Option 1: Share screen #X

How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?

When to use: Sharing complete screen / multiple applications, it will show all that is happening on the screen you selected.

Think twice before using: for sharing only 1 specific program, when having a single monitor or for PowerPoint presentations.

How does it look like?

How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?
Example of how it looks like for the presenter that is sharing the presentation (in full screen) using the “Share Desktop” option. The presenter only has 1 (laptop) screen, so was sharing the complete desktop screen.
How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?
Example of how it looks like for the Attendee that is joined. As you can see, the attendee can see everything that the presenter has on his/her screen.

Option 2: Share Window

How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?

When to use: Sharing 1 specific application window only. It will only share the window you selected and will stay visible, even when you quickly want to check your email (if you are good in multitasking 😉)

Think twice before using: sharing multiple different applications or PowerPoint presentations.

See below an example how it looks like, for the presenter that is sharing his/her PowerPoint Presentation, using the above option (Looks the same as the other one as the presentation was running on Fullscreen)

How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?
Example of how it looks like for the presenter that is sharing the presentation (in full screen) using the “Share Window” option.
How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?
Example of how it looks like for the Attendee that is joined. As you can see, the attendee can only see the presentation that is presented in full screen.

The above 2 options will cause the “can you go to the next slide please” questions during a meeting (with 2 or more presenters).

But wait, there is a solution!

There is another option on how to get the PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting. In the “Share” menu you will also find the section “PowerPoint”.

How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?
In my example the list is empty, but it can be filled with some PowerPoint files already.

Click on “Browse”. From here you get the question where the PowerPoint is located.
Browse to the PowerPoint you want to share, select it, and click on “Share”. This can take a few seconds/minutes (depending on your internet speed and the size of the PowerPoint as the file is being uploaded).

FACTS:
“Yes, this option was already in Skype for Business (Office Web Application Server) that did the same (uploading the PowerPoint and presenting it to the participants)”

“When using this option, the PowerPoint will be uploaded to your Personal OneDrive and shared with everyone in the meeting. This will not be the case for Channel meetings, the PowerPoint will be uploaded to the Team site instead of your pe
rsonal OneDrive”

When uploading is done, the PowerPoint will be showed as content directly. As a presenter you have some options you can set. As default, all participants (presenters and Attendees) can browse through the PowerPoint. But you as the presenter can turn this off so everyone is paying attention to what you are presenting.

How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?
Simply click on the eye icon (see above) to disable that option.
How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?
When clicked, users will be informed that “Private viewing” is disabled.

Let’s go back to the multiple presenters and only 1 that is sharing the PowerPoint presentation.
So, the PowerPoint is uploaded, and all participants have the option to use the option “Take Control” to take over the navigation trough the PowerPoint.

How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?
When another presenter is clicking on “Take Control”, the presenter that clicks it can control the PowerPoint.

To prevent that all others (that will not present) will take over control, you can change the option “Who can present” in the “Meeting Options” menu.

How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?
Meeting option “Who can present?” is set to “Everyone” meaning everyone in the meeting (internal org) can present.

Change it from “Everyone” to “Specific People” and add the presenters.
You can also change it to “Only Me” (if you are the only one presenting).

How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?

Changing this option during the meeting is working, if you change this during the meeting from “Everyone” to “Only Me”, all Participants will be converted to Attendees for this meeting.

My previous blog post “Who can present” was about this option, it explains the different roles for the Teams meeting and covers how to change the default (Everyone can Present) to something else on a Tenant level.

When you are done with presenting the PowerPoint, you can click on “Stop presenting”

How to present PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting?

Is this something you will use in your future Teams Meetings when presenting a PowerPoint file?


Let me know in the comments below.

For now, 
Thanks for reading! 

Kind regards and Stay Healthy, 
Mitchell Bakker

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