Quick and Easy Presenting Tip for PowerPoint in MS Teams

Posted May 28, 2025

By Rich Hewlett 1 min read

Here’s a quick tip that I have found really useful as more and more interactions are being done on MS Teams. There are a few options when using PowerPoint and MS Teams tother to present a slide deck, with the full PowerPoint Live feature being the best for a full presentation experience, however sometimes you want something simpler. For example I often find that I am not only sharing PowerPoint but also doing a demo, showing code and often sharing my desktop throughout the presentation, and for this PowerPoint Live if overkill. Also if using the regular desktop start slide show, it by default opens full screen and can be hard to manoeuver or share when you have multiple screens. That’s why I regularly use the “Browse by an individual (Window)” option. You can find it under Slide Show > Set Up Slide Show, where it sets presentations to run in a resizable window instead of full-screen mode, which makes it much easier to find, alt-tab to, resize and easy to share using the MS Teams share dialog (as it comes up as a window). I can then flip to the window with the presentation in, make it full screen and present my slides.

To be clear this is not a replacement for the PowerPoint Live feature for fully immersive presentations allowing you to seamlessly share slides, access speaker notes, and use pointers/zooms etc. However running your slideshow in its own window is a great option for keeping control of your presentation window during your Teams session.

To use integrated PowerPoint Live, just open PowerPoint and choose “Present in Teams” from the top navigation bar, or if already in Teams click “Share” and select a PowerPoint file within “PowerPoint Live”. However to use my recommended approach go to Slide Show > Set Up Slide Show and choose “Browse by an individual (Window)” option as shown below:

Powerpoint Slide Options