Present a PowerPoint Presentation – using Teams PowerPoint
Running a presentation has become more complex. For example, if the presentation is stored on Microsoft Teams, there are 3 ways to open a presentation! Open in PowerPoint for Teams, Open in PowerPoint for Web, or open in desktop PowerPoint.
For this conversation, we are going to open the presentation in Teams PowerPoint, and present using Teams Presenter View. This will, in almost all instances, be presented during a Microsoft Teams meeting. To clarify, this is not using a screen share to add the slides to the meeting!
First, the presentation file needs to be stored on Microsoft Teams (which is either SharePoint or OneDrive, depending on your M365 account)
Our preferred option is to copy the presentation to a Teams project ahead of the meeting. The other option is done within PowerPoint: with the presentation open, click the “M365” icon in the top right.
And from the pop-up menu, click SAVE.
Note: there is an upload process (eg., a pause) before the presentation can be presented.
Now in the Teams meeting
• Share Content: Click “Share content” in the upper right meeting controls.
• DO NOT select a share screen option
• The POWERPOINT LIVE section lists a selection of presentations from the account OneDrive
• If the presentation is not in the PowerPoint Live list, scroll to the bottom and select BROWSE ONEDRIVE
• Optional: if the presentation has audio, use the INCLUDE SOUND if needed
Teams Presenter View
The presenter now sees the Teams Presenter View as their view of the Teams meeting. The attendees only see the slide in the red outline (they do not see the Presenter View interface, slide “film strip”, or Presenter Notes.
• Navigation: Use the Presenter View navigation buttons, keyboard arrow keys, or a PowerPoint slide remote
TIPS:
If you have 2 monitors, from where you are presenting, and want to see more of the attendees’ webcams or keep the meeting chat separate from Presenter View, use the POP OUT feature. Then position the Teams meeting itself on one monitor and the Teams Presenter View on the other monitor.
Access more options: Select “More actions” to show/hide notes, use a laser pointer, etc.
The Teams Presenter View has a thumbnail “Film Strip” similar to PowerPoint for Mac.
WARNING
By default, Microsoft Teams shares ALL the slides with attendees! Attendees can click ahead of the presenter, AND attendees can download the full presentation (ugh, and ugh!!)
This includes viewing slides in slide sorter – and viewing hidden slides!
DO THIS
To turn off the option for attendees to independently navigate through a PowerPoint, use the PRIVATE VIEW toggle to turn off these options.
FINAL NOTE
Microsoft has done an amazing job of optimizing the bandwidth needs when presenting within the Teams ecosystem (eg. presentation presented through Teams and attendees viewing in a Teams meeting). Back in 2020 Microsoft’s Jeremy Chapman posted a video showcasing how Teams has amazing bandwidth savings vs screen sharing a presentation. More info in our May 19, 2020 post here.
-Troy and the TLC Creative Design Team
The Daily Struggles: Microsoft Teams with PowerPoint Frustrations
Microsoft Teams has become an industry leader in the world of remote work communication and collaboration. It is inevitable that some of you used Teams today!
Of course, our focus is presentations, and PowerPoint. When it comes to opening PowerPoint files, Microsoft Teams can be surprisingly touchy. There is open in Teams, open in PowerPoint for web, and open in PowerPoint desktop. Just clicking the presentation file name opens it directly inside Teams – and you have thought that same as us, why is this harder than it should be?
We polled the TLC Creative design team and this is our current list of complaints (we are really not negative, so we look at this as constructive input to the Microsoft Dev teams).
Teams presenting bandwidth is amazing
Let’s start this list with one benefit presenting with Teams PowerPoint has that Desktop PowerPoint cannot compete with (see, we really are a super positive group of people at TLC Creative!). Microsoft has done amazing work in optimizing PowerPoint presenting by up to 90% less bandwidth vs. screenshare of the slides! This is when presenting a Teams based file, through Microsoft Teams vs. screen sharing the presentation. See this Microsoft video (now 5 years old, so this is not a new technology improvement – May 16, 202o Post).
Multitasking is Tough
First, Teams in its current form, is horrible as multitasking. You’re viewing a presentation inside Teams and want to send a Teams chat to your co-worker to clarify a stat on a slide – and guess what – you can’t! We have to first close the presentation, then switch to Chat, and after getting the answer, go back to the Team, find the presentation file, and click to open it again – ugh! Teams just doesn’t handle multitasking well (yet)!
Teams Presenter View Has Limitations (vs. Desktop Presenter View)
The Teams version of Presenter View has some great improvements we hope to see integrated into the desktop app. But, it also is on our bad list. It is a web-based app, so it can, and does, change often. It does not align with the desktop version on all of its functionality, which is confusing. And it is run inside of Teams, which is just a different environment from the Desktop Presenter View (and for us the desktop version is the standard). Last, edits made to a presentation DO NOT update if the presentation is being presented in Teams – this is a huge issue for us, and our absolute love of co-authoring and making live edits to presentations (yes, even while they are being presented).
Custom Fonts Vanish
As we’ve mentioned in a previous blog posts [LINK], custom fonts need to be installed on the computer. The Teams app only recognizes web-based fonts (eg. Microsoft cloud fonts). So any custom font, even if installed on that computer, is not going to display when the presentation is presented through the Teams Presenter View. Best to stick with classic desktop PowerPoint Presenter View!
Embedded Videos Lose Styling
Here’s another topic we’ve talked about before (October 19, 2017 post). We leverage a lot of video in presentations. And PowerPoint’s ability to stylize, crop and customize videos is fantastic – until you play a stylized video in Teams Presenter View. Cropped video disappears and the full rectangle is displayed. Drop-shadows, rounded corners, and duo-tone color effects are also stripped out and not displayed when presenting in Teams Presenter View. If you added a custom styling, there’s a good chance it’ll disappear when the file is opened in Teams PowerPoint.
No Quick Access Toolbar (QAT), and different toolbars
When editing slides, there is no Quick Access Toolbar (aka QAT) in Teams PowerPoint (or PowerPoint for the web). And Teams PowerPoint (and PowerPoint for the web) have their own unique organization of the toolbars, tabs and menus. So many extra clicks to get things done!
Editing Is Slower
Editing presentations in Teams is simplified. There is different toolbar organization, lack of QAT, lack of plugins, and different interface in many areas. This translates to a slower, less efficient editing process.
The Best Way to Avoid These Issues
Our recommendation, instead of opening presentations with Teams PowerPoint, always use the “Open in Desktop” option! This ensures:
- Full functionality of the desktop PowerPoint app
- So many fewer formatting issues
- The most common Presenter View experience
- Fewer font and video display issues (hey we recognize this is PowerPoint, and the desktop version is not perfect)
Final Thoughts
While Teams is a powerful tool, opening PowerPoint files with Teams PowerPoint comes with more issues than benefits. To avoid frustration, always open PowerPoint files in the full function desktop app. It makes everything smoother and more reliable!
– Troy & the TLC Creative Team
Old Fonts, New Place!
This is big news for graphic designers and any creative professionals using Adobe products! Adobe has recently updated Adobe Fonts with over 1,500 new fonts, the most significant addition in recent years, including industry staples such as Helvetica, Gotham, Avenir, Times New Roman, and Proxima Nova! The best part? Each and every font is now included for all Creative Cloud subscribers.
Forget about hunting for licenses and dealing with “missing fonts” notifications in Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign. Everything is now synced and ready to be used, vastly improving the design workflow.
Read the entire announcement on Adobe’s blog.
And yes, PowerPoint can use Adobe CC Fonts! Read this blog post that has details.
New Podcast Episode Available! “CreativePro Week: Where Design Enthusiasts Unite to Innovate and Inspire! With David Blatner & Chris Converse”
A new episode of The Presentation Podcast is out – listen to it now!
In this episode of The Presentation Podcast, hosts Troy Chollar, Sandy Johnson, and Nolan Haims – along with guests David Blatner of CreativePro, and freelance designer Chris Converse – talk about design. They talk about the ever-changing landscape of design tools, as well as the importance of community and collaboration during the design process. It turns into a lively discussion about the evolving capabilities of PowerPoint, and how it’s still a serious contender in the design world! Listen on your favorite podcast app, or at The Presentation Podcast site here.
Presentation Co-Authoring with Teams, umm, SharePoint – it is confusing, but works great!
Microsoft Teams has become a core element of the TLC Creative Services design studio. As example, this blog post was a collaboration doc in our Social Media Team for me (Troy) to write, a few of our design team to access and prep the images outlined and finally accessed by our Social Media manger to transfer all to this blog post. No emailing files. No syncing files to a server and being uncertain if you have the latest version. We use Teams chat to ask each other questions, connect on Teams calls (sometimes with a webcam on, but more often with a screen share), and access project work files and fill in our timesheets.
Focusing on files stored on Teams, the important thing to know if Microsoft Teams is SharePoint – or at least a new interface for SharePoint. Or maybe a better way to say that is, SharePoint files are now accessed through Teams.
This is a good thing because Microsoft has spent years building SharePoint with features like, security, file history, and collaboration. And the collaboration feature is what we cannot function without (collaboration meaning multiple people can access the exact same file, and edit it simultaneously).
Here is a common workflow for our design team at TLC Creative
- The project is added to Teams as a new Channel within our “Projects” Team (the concept of Teams vs. Channels is one of the more difficult things to understand and work with!).
- The presentation(s) is then copied to the Teams folder (as noted earlier, this is really putting the presentation on SharePoint, but without having to deal with SharePoint)
- The design team working on the presentation open the presentation from Teams – and this is important! Open the presentation in DESKTOP PowerPoint. In Teams click the 3-dot menu next to the file name > Open > Open in Desktop.
- A presentation can seamlessly have 1-2-5+ people reviewing, editing or presenting.
- Note: Teams is easy to setup and have people within the same company access files. It gets more temperamental when adding external people, or you being the external person being added to another company’s Microsoft Team (more about our process and some tips in an upcoming post).
How do you know if a presentation is on your local hard drive or on Microsoft Teams?
- Look at the file name in PowerPoint
- Local files literally tell you they are local. After the file name is “Saved to this PC”
- There is a drop-down menu for local files, but it is informational and really of no value.
- And if it is a Teams file, after the file name is “Last Modified: (time stamp)” and a drop-down menu
- That drop-down menu for Teams files has a lot of options
- Rename the file. And the name will be updated on Teams and to anyone that has the file open!
- Version History. Click the “Version History” at the bottom of the file drop-down for a right action pane to open and provide details on every major update, how made it, and ability to open earlier versions of the file to reference or revived content!
Presentation formatting, and presenting, now evolves around Microsoft Teams for us at TLC Creative. We are focusing Microsoft Teams this month on The PowerPoint Blog.
-Troy @ TLC
Low Res .SVG with Morph Animation
PowerPoint’s Morph transition is just about to turn 10! Ever since it was introduced back in 2016, the TLC Creative team has written dozens of posts on The PowerPoint Blog, and Troy has covered it in many speaking sessions and trainings. Go ahead – search “Morph” on our blog for several tutorials and demos of PowerPoint morph transition.
But the real post today is about one issue Morph has (and spoiler alert: it’s STILL not fixed). Content displays low-res when growing during the transition (ugh!)
Option 1 – Imported .SVG Graphics
Although your icon or shape might be vector, PowerPoint will substitute a pixelized .PNG during the tweening of the transition. This is why it looks a little fuzzy.
In the above example, notice how the icon starts crisp and ends with no quality loss when sized larger. However, during the morph, it goes a little fuzzy.
So why is this? An .SVG has a .PNG placeholder for display. The animation is animating the smaller .PNG image to the larger, and then updated to the actual .SVG again after the transition – hence a low res appearance of the small image growing to much larger.
Option 2 – PowerPoint Shapes
So, let’s try another technique. Create a shape directly from PowerPoint. In this case, the Not Allowed symbol.
We know these shapes are vector based and that they will resize larger with no distortion. However, the morph transition still does not like that. You’ll get the same distorted animation process going vector, to raster, and back to vector.
So, what else can we try?
Option 3 – Grow-Shrink Animation
This technique example will use one of PowerPoint pre-set animations – the Grow and Shrink.
Unfortunately, this result is even worse when applied. As you can see from the above example, even though it is a vector shape, the tweening and end result are very distorted. And stays that way! The Grow-Shrink animation does not convert the shape back into a vector when finished. You’re stuck with a fuzzy image.
Option 4 – Ungrouped .SVG Shapes
As we discovered, a solid .SVG file will distort when growing larger during a morph. What about breaking up, or ungrouping an .SVG that is made from several elements? In the example below, there are two ungrouped vector items. You’ll notice that the virus icon on the left morphs fairly smoothly. There is still distortion during the transition, but the shapes generally stay intact. The robot on the right is a different story. It’s not as symmetrical and contains some unique shapes. The head shape especially, and PowerPoint does not quite know how to convert it properly.
Overall, there really is not a perfect solution to avoid a fuzzy morph. When designing these types of transitions, just keep in mind you’re going to have some subtle distortion. Speeding up the timing of the transition will help visually, but in reality, it still doesn’t solve the overall issue.
-Troy and the TLC Creative design team
Many Charts, 1 Legend To Rule Them All!
Presentations are meant to communicate ideas clearly and effectively, but too often, slides are cluttered with redundant elements that distract and hide the information to be conveyed. And as we look at charts this month, we find that they are often full of unneeded visual distraction. But this is a specialty scenario where the slide content with multiple charts creates opportunity to simplify the visual elements.
Three Charts: Three Legends
In this presentation, many slides had multiple charts, and each one included its own legend. At first glance, this might seem harmless—after all, each chart needs a legend, right? But in reality, this redundancy forces your audience to process the same information multiple times, making it harder to focus on what actually matters: the data trends and insights.
Our design goal is to remove adds unnecessary visual clutter and enable to audience to process the slide and quickly identify the message. The layout is good. All the charts visually align, accurately display the same Y axis metric, have the same color coding ̶ and have the same legend.
Three Charts: A Unified Legend
Because the legend is identical, instead of repeating it three times, we streamlined the slide by using just one legend beneath all three charts. This simple adjustment immediately reduces the visual clutter and makes it easier for the audience to focus on the data.
We are happy with this “1 Legend To Rule Them All” update. Which was similarly done on many other slides in this presentation. The cognitive load is reduced, and the message comes across quicker and clearer.
Why This Works
- Improves Readability – A cleaner layout allows the audience to process information faster.
- Reduces Redundancy – Eliminates unnecessary repetition, keeping attention on the data.
- Enhances Aesthetics – A well-organized slide looks more professional and engaging.
- Guides the Audience – With less distraction, viewers can focus on what’s important.
- Small Tweaks, Big Impact
- Great slide design isn’t about adding more—it’s about removing what doesn’t serve the message. By centralizing your legend, you create a more effective and visually appealing slide that helps your audience focus on what truly matters: the insights behind your data.
The TLC Creative presentation design team always takes a step back and asks: Are there unnecessary repeating elements? A little decluttering can go a long way in making a slideshow presentation more impactful.
– Christie on the TLC Creative design team