How to Present with Presentation Live
PowerPoint’s Live Presentations are bound to be a game changer for virtual and remote meetings. As promised, today is about the process of setting up a Live Presentation.
Currently the presentation must be open in PowerPoint online (I am hopeful that the ability to open a OneDrive/Teams hosted presentation in desktop PowerPoint will be an option soon). TIP: to move a file to OneDrive and open in PowerPoint online, here is a very quick how-to: Open the presentation, go to File > Share > Share with People, and enter your Office email if PowerPoint is not logged in to your profile. Go to office.com/launch/powerpoint, find your presentation, and open in PowerPoint online.
In PowerPoint online, use the SIMPLIFIED RIBBON (more on this in the next post). Go to the SLIDE SHOW tab. Then go to PRESENT LIVE drop down menu. Choose between either Only people in your organization for added security and private meetings, or Anyone for a larger audience that may not be signed in to your organization.

Click Present Live and you’re live! A PowerPoint live screen will overlay the presentation. This is the QR code attendees can scan, or the URL to add to a browser. The “___ have joined” is a nice addition and provides a nice analytic. Stay on this page for as long as needed to ensure everyone gets in. Click anywhere on the slide and the welcome screen is removed and displays slide 1 of the presentation.

TIP: display the welcome screen and QR code any time during the presentation. In the pop up Slideshow Toolbar in the lower left, click the “Live” button and choose “Show Welcome Screen again.” Or use the copy the link to email or message it to anyone.

People viewing the presentation do not need a Microsoft 365 subscription. If viewing on a mobile device, they need at least iOS version 11, or Android version 8. Presenters must run from an updated version of Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera. TIP: Safari will not run a Presentation Live presentation, but it can be viewed on Safari. And PowerPoint Live, for both presenting and viewing, works on both Windows and Mac.
Come back to the next post, which is a list of potential “gotchas” to be aware of with Presentation Live.
Troy @ TLC
PowerPoint Presentation Live is LIVE!
A feature I’ve been excited for since the Microsoft team first teased it to the MVPs last year is finally here. Microsoft has been taunting us with the new Live Presentations feature, and it’s ready for you to try out – just in time for all the virtual meetings and conferences going on!

So what is it? PowerPoint Live Presentations is a new way to share a PowerPoint presentation. The presenter can now put the presentation right on their audiences’ devices. And it adds some new presentation capabilities for the audience. Anyone invited can watch the presentation you are presenting live on their mobile device or computer screen, they can go back to see any previously-presented slides (but not get ahead of you), give live feedback, and most amazing, see live transcription of your presentation – in virtual any language! And each person viewing can choose the language of their choice for the transcription!!

On the next post I am going to walk through the process of starting a presentation as a Live Presentation. But the basics are:
- Presenters must have a Microsoft 365 subscription
- The presentation must present from PowerPoint online (note: truly run PowerPoint only, not a OneDrive presentation opened in the desktop app or Teams)
- Any viewing does not need a Microsoft 365 subscription (yay!)
- The viewer just needs the QR code or URL (see the next post for how to and a demo)

The viewing/audience experience:
- During the presentation, the slides display and update in real time
- It is slides and voice, no webcam
- Everyone watching can independently view previous slides (but can’t go past the slide you’re currently on)
- Everyone watching can choose 1 of 60+ languages to have your talk automatically, and in very close to real time, transcription
- The audience can “react” to each slide with a set of emojis such as “thumbs up,” “laughing,” or “puzzled” that appear briefly on the presenter’s screen (I am not certain I see this feature liked in professional corporate presentations, but it is going to be a hit with those younger than me!)

After the presentation ends:
- The audience screen pops up a short survey with categories such as Slide Design and Speaker Skills
- The presenter receives an email with a summary of the feedback; how many reactions, which slide received the most reactions, and the audience evaluation (anonymous and compiled)

The live transcription, available in 60+ languages, is a technology marvel. I have the opportunity to be a part of several corporate meetings each year that have live audio translation. While the Presentation Live transcription is not going to replace that, it is amazing and will make presentations far more accessible to multiple language audiences. The Presentation Live transcription is text only, not audio. It is fast, I would say pretty good, and in our internal tests, the bilingual members of our TLC creative team said that the other languages are pretty spot on.
[videopack id=”14381″ width=”464″]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/PresentationLive-3.mp4[/videopack]
We’re pretty exited about the capabilities and possibilities of PowerPoint Live Presentations. Stay tuned as we spend the next few posts going more in depth on the Presentation Live features!
Troy @ TLC
Isometric Design and 3D Models
The term “isometric” seems like it can be used interchangeably with “3D,” but they are slightly different forms of adding dimension to an object.
Here is a demo we created (using PowerPoint of course), that goes through some of similarities and differences between a 3D model and an isometric illustration.
[videopack id=”14365″]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/3D-Cube-and-Isometric-Design_v2.mp4[/videopack]
Isometric design appears dimensional, but it’s “fake” 3D, as it’s not based on a true 3D model like the cube in the video (callout to Jake who created the 3D model for this post). The lines of shapes are angled at 33°, but you cannot show any other view of the isometric illustration without drawing a version. The 3D model, on the other hand, is easy to manipulate and move around in PowerPoint.
Along with not being able to show different sides of the isometric illustration, you can’t show the bottom either. This is consistent among pretty much all isometric designs. However, this, along with the consistent 33° angle, allows all isometric drawings to align and connect seamlessly if you’re building a larger illustration.
Podcast Episode 104: Remote Presenting Update
A new episode of The Presentation Podcast is available today! Join Troy, Sandy and Nolan as they have a lively conversation about the many remote presenting projects and presentations they have been involved with over the past few weeks.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and Soundcloud – or search The Presentation Podcast for “How are the Remote Presentation Meetings Going?” or go direct to the episode page here: https://thepresentationpodcast.com/podcast/104
Our Isometric Bar Chart Process
For our Creative Challenge #5, the design team utilized Isometric Illustration for the collaborative bar chart. If you’re unfamiliar, isometric illustration is a type of 3D drawing perspective that is based on using 30-degree angles. By using the same scale for every axis, the image remains proportional and non-distorted. Isometric design also creates a uniform footprint for elements so they are interchangeable with other elements and provide a consistent layout perspective across elements, and slides. For this project, the isometric layout guaranteed that each designers art for their assigned country would appear consistent and uniform with all of the other elements. The bar chart bars also were based on the same isometric 30-degree angle perspective.
In the previous blog posts on our COVID Design Challenge #5, you saw that one of the main goals was to collaborate through Microsoft Teams. This included dividing up the bar chart by country: each designer was assigned one country to create isometric artwork for. Here is an example of design process of one building, and country “tile”. Kelli on our design team was assigned Iceland – pretty fun, until she realized there aren’t a lot of isometric designs out there for Icelandic landmarks! So, she made her own! Here is a walk through of her design process:
Kelli identified this building, the Hallgrímskirkja Church in Iceland, as a notable and recognizable landmark:

(Image courtesy of Nordic Visitor Iceland)
Beautiful – and very complex! Kelli broke down her design process for turning this Icelandic landmark into an Isometric illustration.

- Original vector artwork she created
- Sheared the artwork at a -30° angle
- Reversed the center part to create the main tower
- Sheared and adjusted the top of the tower to make it dimensional
- Built out the curved “wings” of the building
- Added the back part of the building
The Hallgrímskirkja Church was integrated into her version of the Iceland landscape and set atop one of the bars in the chart assigned to her.

Here is the Design Challenge #5 Isometric Chart
Our very creative design team took this week’s highly collaborative challenge and turned it into something incredible! Not only did they communicate and collaborate efficiently and effectively, but they took the idea of a bar chart to a new dimension (or perspective)!
The TLC Creative design team kicked off the project with a group call using a Teams’ video meeting. The discussion was focused on ideas of what they wanted the result to visually be, how to divide the tasks, and assign roles and responsibilities. They used the Posts tab in the designated channel to post a recap of what was covered on the call for those that couldn’t make it:

The design team decided to maintain the bar chart concept, but with a more decorative and visual styling. Color scheme identified, perspective agreed upon, and graphic style to represent each country established. Each team member created their assigned country’s artwork and data viz graph. Each was merged into the core PowerPoint file hosted in the Microsoft Team.

The next phase was another group collaboration meeting to discuss options for moving from good to a great visual. Here is the final team collaboration chart and slide layout:

All text is editable in PowerPoint. All elements are imported .svg graphics that can be adjusted in PowerPoint. The entire process of working from a central Teams file with everyone’s edits automatically incorporated for the other designers to instantly see and work in tandem with each other was a success! Our design team did a great job on this challenge and, as a bonus, our design studio is using Microsoft Teams more than ever now for communication and collaboration!
Troy @ TLC
What is the TLC Creative Design Challenge #5?
With a whole month of COVID Challenges under the team’s belt, it seemed time to work on something more timely! Building off the previous design challenge (where our design team worked from files hosted in a Microsoft Teams team), we decided to explore the collaborative features of Microsoft Teams even more. The TLC Design Team was sent this prompt (via a designated channel in Teams!) to start the week:
Welcome to Challenge 5! In the Files tab, you’ll see a single slide with a chart comparing the number of COVID-19 tests performed to date with the number of confirmed cases being reported. Each of you will pick one country and design those two bars of the chart. The goal is to focus on two things: design (do something amazingly creative with your piece of the chart) and communication (work together as a team to determine how you’re going to go about sharing the work).
Key takeaways: the final design will be just 1 slide that all 6 designers worked on, and it will all be done with Microsoft Teams’ collaborative environment.
This is what our designer team was given to work with (in Microsoft Teams, of course):

Check back in a couple days for the incredible results!
