Learn how to easily share your computer screen in Microsoft Teams. Choose from three presenter modes and follow a few simple steps depending on your version of Teams.
Key Points:
Microsoft Teams is a top collaboration tool that allows your employees to communicate and collaborate, work in teams, and make it easy to schedule meetings. This productivity tool helps businesses have more flexible and interactive meetings, empowers collaboration, and increases productivity in general. The popularity of Microsoft Teams is attributed to its wide range of features and functionalities.
Among them, screen sharing is one of the best ways to showcase content. The screen sharing feature allows you to share your computer screen in a video conference. Let’s look at how you can share your screen on Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft Teams offers three presenter modes that allow presenters to add their video feed to their presentations. This allows other meeting participants to see the presenter and their shared content.
1. Standout
In this mode, Microsoft Teams superimposes your video feed into your presentation. The content you share will become the presentation’s background, and the meeting participants will see you at the screen’s bottom right corner.
2. Side-by-Side
The side-by-side mode divides the screen between you, the presenter, and your shared content.
3. Reporter
This mode puts the presenter and their shared screen on a screen-wide background image.
Microsoft Teams for Windows Desktop is available in two versions; Teams for Home/Small Businesses and Teams for Work/School. The difference between the two is that Teams for work/school has presenter modes while Teams for home/small business doesn’t. Depending on your Microsoft Teams version, you can share your screen by:
Teams for Home/Small Business
You should remember that Window sharing is not supported on the Microsoft Teams Linux app. Therefore, a Linux user will only share their entire screen. Sharing your entire desktop screen allows users to see everything on your screen except your app and system notifications.
Teams for Work/School
Before using the screen-sharing feature on a Mac computer, you’ll first have to give the app permission to record your screen and audio. You can take the following steps to share your screen on Microsoft Teams from a Mac.
After you start sharing your screen, the presenter toolbar will appear at the top of the meeting window. You can click on the Pin icon to keep the toolbar on your screen. The presenter toolbar allows you to stop your screen share, switch presenter modes, and give control to another meeting participant. You can share screen control with another meeting participant by:
Sharing your screen control allows the other participant to make selections, revisions, and other changes on your shared screen.
You may encounter various issues while sharing your screen, including a blank screen even when you’re already sharing. Here are some troubleshooting steps you can take to fix problems with screen sharing:
1. Update Your Microsoft Teams App
Outdated Microsoft Teams apps have bugs that may prevent various features from working. Microsoft regularly releases app updates that include various improvements and bug fixes. Updating your Microsoft Teams app may fix your screen sharing not working problem. You can update the app by:
If you want to update Teams for Home or Small Businesses, click on the three-dot menu, select Settings, then About Teams.
2. Force Close and Restart Microsoft Teams
Force closing and restarting refreshes the Microsoft Teams app and may fix problems with the screen-sharing feature. To do this:
To force close Teams on a Mac computer, press Command + Option + Esc, select Microsoft Teams, then click on Force Quit to close the Microsoft Teams app.
3. Clear Microsoft Teams Cache
When you use Microsoft Teams for a long time, cache data might pile up, creating issues with the app. Therefore, you can clear the app’s cache to see if it fixes the problem. You can do this by:
If you’re a Mac user, open Finder, then select Go > Go to Folder on the menu bar. Type ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Teams in the folder path and press Enter. Afterward, select and drag all the files and folders in the Teams folder into Trash.
You should also ensure you have a good internet speed and that the Microsoft Teams app has the necessary permissions.