Using PowerPoint Live in Microsoft Teams

It used to be when you were presenting in a Microsoft Teams meeting and had a PowerPoint slide deck, you had to share your screen, start up PowerPoint, and start the presentation on your computer. Everyone saw the same thing you saw, and you didn’t have any ability to jump ahead or annotate a slide without everyone watching you stop the presentation to look for the next slide. However, now we have PowerPoint Live, which makes presenting a PowerPoint slide deck much easier. Here’s how it works…

When you start to share content, you’ll notice an entry at the bottom of the Share Content panel titled PowerPoint Live. You can either select one of the suggested PowerPoint slides…

Or you can scroll down a bit further and select the option to find a PowerPoint file on your computer or in OneDrive:

Once you select the file, this is what you’ll see while presenting. The large slide is the one the audience is currently seeing, but you can see all the slides in the file so you can jump around if needed. You can also see your speaker notes if you had any. You also have easy access to the bar that allows you to annotate the slide with a virtual pen or highlighter:

One you’re done with your presentation, click on Stop Presenting, and everyone will go back to seeing the normal Teams meeting screen with attendee images and/or videos.

I really like this feature, as it makes for a much more professional presentation for you and the attendees.