Allow Teams meeting participants to draw on/annotate screen content using PowerPoint collaboration

Zoom allows all meeting participants to annotate the screen that is being shared, regardless of what is being shared. The annotations identify who added the drawing or text. Teams does not allow any annotation by participants. This is one of the top requests from users but doesn’t appear to be on Microsoft’s roadmap to be added to Teams any time soon.

If you really need to collaborate with others in a Teams meeting, one option is to use a shared PowerPoint document to allow anyone to add drawings, shapes, or text. This video shows you the six steps to make this happen in a Teams meeting.

Here are the time codes for the six steps

0:00 Introduction

0:44 Step 1: Create a PowerPoint file with the content you want people to collaborate on

3:14 Step 2: Create a link for others to edit the file

5:17 Step 3: Open the collaboration file in a browser before the meeting

6;21 Step 4: Invite people to collaborate during the meeting

8:04 Step 5: People annotate slides and collaborate

12:07 Step 6: Return to the rest of the meeting

1 or 2 screens?
Teams, Zoom, or Webex?
Windows or Mac?

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Where to go next
–>More articles on virtual presenting –>Training for your team on presenting virtually
–>More articles on virtual & hybrid sales presentations –>Training for your sales team

By Dave Paradi

Dave Paradi has over twenty-two years of experience delivering customized training workshops to help business professionals improve their presentations. He has written ten books and over 600 articles on the topic of effective presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. His focus is on helping corporate professionals visually communicate the messages in their data so they don't overwhelm and confuse executives. Dave is one of fewer than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams communities. His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 4.8 million times and liked over 17,000 times on YouTube.