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