Microsoft Teams is unique. PowerPoint is not needed to present. Okay, to clarify, PowerPoint for Web is integrated into Microsoft Teams, so the Desktop app of PowerPoint is not necessarily needed to run a presentation. Further, it is more than PowerPoint for Web as Teams offers its own special version of Presenter View. Overall, it is a somewhat tangled and confusing scenario of what application to use, when. I am going to start with what I think is Microsoft’s presenting option they would like us to adopt and use (note: I see advantages and disadvantages).

  1. To present in Teams, you must first be in a Teams meeting (Tip: you can start a meeting with just you in the meeting to test and practice a presentation). Here are the two most common ways of starting a presentation:
    1. Open the presentation from Teams, so it is PowerPoint in Teams. Click “Present in Teams” in the upper right corner of the presentation
    2. From Teams, before opening the presentation, go to “Share Content” in the Teams meeting, navigate down to “PowerPoint Live” then choose a recently opened file or click “Browse” to find another presentation.
  2. In both options, next is Teams launching the presentation
  3. When the presentation opens, it will be a version of Presenter View. In the Microsoft Teams version of Presenter View, the familiar PowerPoint Presenter View layout and options are available. The top band also includes several Teams features. The bottom is the “film strip” preview of slides (similar to PowerPoint for Mac) and presence indicators of who is in the PowerPoint file.

    This is a common confusion area. As a presenter, your Teams meeting is taken over by the presentation Presenter View. However, the audience only sees the 16×9 PowerPoint slides.
    TIP: with this version of Presenter View, your mouse IS NOT seen, even if it over the 16×9 slide area (see below note about the virtual laser pointer).
    TIP: the full slide sorter is available, along with the film strip slide thumbnails.
    TIP: if you do not want Presenter View, you can view the slides full frame (removes presenter notes and film strip thumbnails, but keeps the presentation tools.
  4. The Teams Presenter View re are tools to aid in presenting:

    1. Cursor (click to turn off any of the other tools; laser, marker, highlighter, eraser)
    2. Laser Pointer (use this for the audience to see when you want to “point” to the slides. Click again to turn off or click the Cursor icon to turn off. Click the Laser Pointer to change color)
    3. Marker (default is the red marker, but presenter can choose other colors and marker thickness. Click the marker to change color/thickness)
    4. Yellow Highlighter (Click the highlighter to change color/thickness)
    5. Eraser (used to remove slide inking – from the marker tool)