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The right way to present a PowerPoint file during a Microsoft Teams meeting

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You can have your PPT cake and eat it too

PowerPoint is likely one of the most popular apps shared during a Teams meeting. There’s a reason when you bring up the share options, PowerPoint takes up more than a third of it. People present slides all the time. But are they using PowerPoint to its potential when they use Teams? Most people do not. To view a video version of this post (lots of video demos!), press play below. (You should watch it, actually.)

PowerPoint has a lot of really great features and while this isn’t a PowerPoint best practices post, I do really appreciate PowerPoint for many of its professional features, like smooth transitions (Morph can be amazing), slide notes, non-distracting animations, screen annotations, and especially presenter view.

Well, if you’ve ever tried to present a slide deck in Teams, you’ll know that some of these features can be hard to find depending on which method you use to share your slides. There are three main sharing options and these are the only three I’ll cover today.

The three options—and I’m going to stick to this naming convention throughout the post—are The Teams Built-In Share, Desktop Window Share, and Presenter View Share.

TL;DR: For the most part, you want Presenter View Share. Launch your slideshow like you would normally. Alt-Tab to your meeting and share the window (not the screen) , Alt-Tab back to your presentation, right-click, and select Use Presenter View . That's it! Below is a more in-depth review of this way and the most common other ways to share slide decks during a Teams meeting.

Teams Built-In Share

Teams Built-In Share is the first option we’re going to discuss and it uses the built-in PowerPoint option. The sharing drawer shows you all your recent PowerPoint files. Though note that they’re only ones you’ve accessed in SharePoint or OneDrive; you don’t see anything from your local device or other cloud locations like Google Drive. Whether you know it or not, this method makes use of PowerPoint for the web—or formerly known as PowerPointOnline—so you’re getting the “Lite” version of PowerPoint when you present. That can work in many situations, especially if your slides are simple and straight forward.

There are a couple major upsides to this method. First, everything stays right in Teams and you have full control of your computer and its screen, unlike normal presentation mode with PowerPoint, where it completely takes over your screen. The other is that your viewers can actually choose to jump ahead or backward in your slides at their own pace without impacting what others see, which is a benefit you don’t get from any otherPowerPoint sharing option. You can disable this if you want to keep them on the slide you’re presenting, though. I generally don’t like people being able to jump slides on their own; it's usually more a distraction than a benefit. So for me, this isn’t a compelling feature.

The major downsides to this method are that you’re stuck with PowerPoint Lite: animations and transitions are sometimes really poor—and yes, animations and transitions are incredibly powerful for your message when they’re used correctly. But more importantly to me, you don’t get presenter view, so no annotations, no notes, and you have absolutely no idea which slide or animation is coming up next (unless you practice your slides a lot, but let's be real: you probably cobbled them together right before the meeting). Those downsides are the reason that I never use this method, even if it is right up in my face when I want to share a slide deck in Teams. The only way you’ll find me using Teams Built-In Share is once presenter view is built into PowerPoint for the web. 

Desktop Window Share

Desktop Window Share, the second option, is a nice little hack for sharing your presentation from the desktop app, complete with all the slick transitions and animations you’d like. You won’t get presenter view with this method, but you will get safety and comfort of all the full-fledged features in the desktop app and it won’t take up your whole screen while you’re presenting. Though it will include a little chrome in the top toolbar.

This method is similar to what people use when they set up kiosks for people to browse at expos or stores, except in this case, it doesn’t take up the whole screen. To present this way, you need to toggle a setting. Jump into the Slide Show tab in PowerPoint and click Set Up Slide Show . Select Browsed by an individual and click OK.

Now when you present this slideshow, it’ll show your entire slide in its own window, without the rest of PowerPoint showing. It’s like a mini PowerPoint presenter mode. To share this window, jump to your Teams meeting, click Share , and select PowerPoint under the Window section. Handy.

Presenter View Share

Note: This feature seems to have been recently removed from PowerPoint on macOS; I haven't been able to test it on Windows to confirm any impact there. I've reached out to Microsoft for some explanation or insights on this. I'll provide an update when I have one.

And lastly, Presenter View Share is my favorite way to present a slide deck during a Teams meeting and it’s really the subject of this post. Presenter View Share gives you all the features of the desktop app—because that’s what you’re using—including presenter view. That means you get notes and annotations, can see the upcoming slide, and can jump around slides as much as you want.

This technique is actually stupidly simple, but it’s not obvious at all. To share your presentation this way, it works best if you’re only using one monitor. If you have a second monitor, I’d actually recommend disconnecting it. And that’s coming from someone who always uses two monitors. The reason for that is the feature isn't available when you have two monitors because you'll already have presenter view on one of them and you can't share PowerPoint as a window when you have two monitors because the app takes up two windows and becomes essentially disqualified from being shared as a window (the only way to share the slides is by sharing the whole screen, which is less private).

First, have your PowerPoint file open and start the presentation the way you normally would. Now, Alt-Tab (Command-Tab on Mac) back to your Teams meeting and share the PowerPoint window—not the whole screen. Alt-Tab back to PowerPoint. And here’s where the magic happens: right-click on your slide and click Use Presenter View . And that’s it!

Wait, you’re worried that the people on the other end are seeing presenter view? They’re not. In fact, they didn’t even see you right-click because the menu isn’t part of the window. For them, nothing happened. While on your side, you just went from low fi to high fi in a matter of two clicks. From here you can do all the stuff you want through presenter mode and everyone on the other end will only see slides.

So, why do I like this method the most? Because I get to have my cake and eat it too! Sure, the slides take up my whole screen, but that doesn’t stop me from jumping around my device all I want. Alt-Tab is your best friend. If you’re not an Alt-Tab person now, you will be moving forward, because it’s a great little trick for jumping between apps.

That means I can be taking notes about a potential customer in my OneNote app during a demo without them knowing. Or I can check in on the meeting itself to see if someone’s raised their hand or said something I need to respond to. All they’ll ever see is the current slide—even if you see another app on top of it—because all I’m sharing with them is the PowerPoint window.

Edit: Some folks have reported they can actually use two monitors and still are able to share the single presented-view of PowerPoint. I can't confirm this because on Mac, the Use Presenter View isn't available when you have two screens (the option is not available in the right-click menu). That said, if you use multiple monitors, you're a power user. So take 2 minutes to check with a colleagues to test if it still works in your situation to pull this off, but with the multiple monitors you're used to. So if one of your original thoughts was, "I can't not use two monitors", test before you knock it. 🙂

Frankly, I’ll never look back on any other presentation options again. At least until Teams Built-In Share—remember, I really mean PowerPoint for the Web when I say this—finally transitions from PowerPoint Lite to a full-fledged version of PowerPoint. Once that day comes, I may convert. But for now, I’m sticking to the desktop app because it’s a beast.

But what do you think? How do you present slides during Teams meetings? What tips do you have when you’re presenting? Share them in a comment below so others can learn some of your tips and hacks for better meetings in Teams.

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Teams view-only meeting experience

• 18 contributors
• Applies to: Microsoft Teams

APPLIES TO: ✔️Meetings ✖️Webinars ✖️Town halls

Microsoft Teams supports up to 10,000 attendees in a meeting. Once the main meeting reaches capacity at 1,000 users, additional attendees join with a view-only experience. Attendees in the view-only experience can view the meeting, but have limited access to meeting features. Meeting organizers see notifications for the view-only experience when around 500 users are in the meeting.

Initial attendees who join before the meeting capacity enjoy full meeting experience. These attendees can share audio/video, see shared content, and participate in chat.

Attendees who join after the main meeting capacity is reached have a view-only experience. These attendees can join the view-only experience through desktop, web, and Teams mobile (Android and iOS).

As an admin, you can decide if organizers with this policy have the view-only experience attendees join after the 1,000 user capacity.

Teams view-only experience controls

You enable the view-only experience using the Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet from the SkypeForBusiness PowerShell module or at least version 2.0.0 of the Microsoft Teams module .

To enable the view-only experience, use the following PowerShell script:

To disable the view-only experience, use the following PowerShell script:

User experience

The user experience varies based on several factors.

When the capacity of the main meeting is reached, an attendee can't join the meeting if any of the following are true:

• You didn't enable the Teams view-only experience for either the organizer or for the entire tenant.
• The view-only attendee can't bypass the lobby. For example, if a meeting organizer chooses to have only People in my organization bypass the lobby, an attendee outside of the org can't join the meeting as a view-only attendee.

When the capacity of the main meeting is reached, the meeting organizer and presenters see a banner informing them that new attendees might join as view-only attendees.

When the capacity of the main meeting is reached, meeting attendees are informed on the prejoin screen that they're joining in view-only mode.

If space is available, users always join the main meeting. If the main meeting reaches capacity, but attendees leave, space becomes available again. In this case, new attendees join the main meeting until it fills up. View-only attendees can't be promoted to the main meeting.

If presenter and attendee roles are set, presenters who join after capacity is reached in the main meeting become view-only attendees. These presenters have the same limitations as other view-only attendees. Organizers are always guaranteed space in the main meeting.

Meeting presenter and organizer limitations

Limitations for meeting presenters and organizers include:

• They have no information about the view-only attendees. We don't support E-discovery for view-only attendees.
• Users in the main meeting can't see the view-only attendees.
• They can't remove a view-only attendee from the meeting.

Attendee count only reflects the attendees in the main meeting and not the view-only attendees. Presenters can't get an exact count of attendees in the view-only experience.

Experience for view-only attendees

The Teams view-only experience allows attendees to:

• Listen to the participants in the main Teams meeting.
• See the video feed for the active speaker (if the active speaker is sharing video).
• See content being shared using the share desktop or screen functionality.

View-only attendees can't perform these actions in the meeting:

• Join the meeting if they don't have permission to bypass the lobby.
• Join the view-only meeting using Audio Conferencing.
• Join the view-only meeting using Microsoft Teams Rooms system or using Cloud Video Interop (CVI) services.
• Share their audio or video.
• See or participate in the meeting chat.
• See the video feed of meeting participants unless the participant is the active speaker.
• See PowerPoint files that are shared using the PowerPoint Live functionality or individual application shares (other than desktop or screen sharing).
• Raise their hand in the meeting.
• Send or see reactions.
• Interact with any third-party App integrating into the Teams Meeting, including Polls.
• Access the meeting recording.

View-only feature limitations

View-only attendees can only see Live Captions on Desktop and Web. Only English captions are supported at this time.

View-only attendees don't have Information Barrier support. If you need Information Barrier support in your organization, you should disable this feature.

Streaming technology supports view-only attendees.

View-only attendees have a single video experience. They can see either the active speaker or the content being shared, but not both.

We don't currently support Gallery , Large gallery , or Together mode layouts for view-only attendees.

The following lobby policies support view-only attendees: 'People in my org,' 'People in my org and guests,' 'People in my org, trusted orgs, and guests,' and 'Everyone' . If you use a lobby policy that doesn't support view-only attendees, they're rejected from the meeting.

View-only attendees don't have the same latency as a regular attendee. 1

1 View-only attendees have a 30-second video and audio delay in the meeting.

Networking Considerations

Teams View-Only meetings utilize the same platform as Teams live events. View-only attendees receive meeting content, audio, and video as TCP HTTPS streams. We strongly recommend that you bypass proxy infrastructure for Teams live events URLs and IP addresses. For more information, see Azure CDN Coverage by Metro .

Related topics

• IT Admins - Control who can bypass the meeting lobby in Microsoft Teams
• Configure the Microsoft Teams meeting lobby for sensitive meetings

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Microsoft Teams announces freely move toolbar for improved presentations

published on June 4, 2024

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• Microsoft Teams introduces movable presenter toolbar for screen sharing.
• Presenters can now optimize video playback for smoother presentations in Teams.
• These features are in preview for Teams Public Preview or Microsoft 365 Targeted Release.

Microsoft Teams is introducing two new features designed for the screen-sharing experience for presenters in virtual meetings.

Previously, the Presenter toolbar in Teams remained fixed at the top of the screen during screen sharing. This new update lets presenters to drag and reposition the toolbar anywhere on their screen.

This customization ensures that the toolbar doesn’t obscure important areas of the content being shared, such as menus or captions.

Teams now offer a new “Optimize” button on the Presenter toolbar. This button allows presenters to manually optimize video playback for a smoother viewing experience for meeting participants. This feature is particularly useful in situations where automatic video detection fails or experiences delays.

How it works 1. Start your Teams meeting and, when the time comes to present, select Share from the toolbar to share your screen. 2. You can now move the Presenter toolbar from its default location at the top of the screen and reposition it in any area of your screen. Just click on any non-interactive area of the Toolbar or on the new drag handle. NOTE: The Presenter toolbar will also minimize after 4 seconds when not in use; when minimized, the toolbar will still display a red badge to clearly indicate the ongoing sharing session. 3. If you are sharing video or other high-motion content, you can click the Optimize?button on the?toolbar for a smoother playback experience.

These new features are currently available in preview for users enrolled in the Teams Public Preview or Microsoft 365 Targeted Release program.

The update applies to the new Teams client for Windows and macOS.

It’s important to note that only the presenter needs to be using the preview version for everyone in the meeting to benefit from these improvements.

In summary, these updates aim to provide presenters with more control and flexibility when sharing their screen in Teams meetings.

More here .

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Adjust your view in a Teams meeting

Teams tries to anticipate what you’ll want to see in a meeting. When someone starts speaking, we show them. When someone shares content, we show that.

But when you'd rather see something else, there are a few ways to tell Teams.

Switch between people and content

When someone's sharing a presentation, you can switch between viewing that content and watching the people in the room by simply clicking on the video you're interested in. Try this when there's a presentation taking place in a meeting room and you want to see who's talking and note their body language. 

Pin a video

To focus on a particular video, right click and select Pin . The video will be pinned to your view regardless of who's talking. You can pin as many videos as will fit on your screen. If you change your mind, right click again and hit Unpin .

Reframe a video

Teams crops some videos to make them fit your screen better. If you want a different view of a particular video—for example, if someone’s cropped out of the video or it only shows part of their face—right click and select Fit to frame to see the entire video.

Select Fill frame to see a closer, cropped view.

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Can participants choose NOT to hear audio clips within a presentation being shared by another person but still hear presenter?

In Microsoft Teams, I often include soundbites, videos or music in my PowerPoint presentations shared over Teams in meetings. Employees have asked if there is a way for them to not hear them when listening to the presentation. They only want to hear when people are talking. This is due to people wearing hearing aids and such.

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• Microsoft Agent |

Hello Joanne Smith_402 ,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community.

As you have mentioned, Employees have asked if there is a way for them to not hear them when listening to the presentation. They only want to hear when people are talking. U nfortunately, teams don't yet support sharing computer sound this way. The reason is you are playing a video as part of a presentation.

Please make a note, please note that, our development team/product team takes such decisions for product development/feature adding. Microsoft Teams is continuously improving its features to make virtual meetings more accessible. You can send your valuable feedback directly to Microsoft to improve this navigation feature in future updates. To send feedback in Team you can select the Help button at the bottom lower-left of Teams and then choose Suggest a feature or Give feedback to tell Microsoft what you think. Additionally, you can use the Microsoft feedback portal: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/

Appreciate your patience and understanding. Have a great day! 

Thanks for choosing the MS community.

Md Ashabul Haque  | Microsoft Community Moderator

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