How to Share Your Screen on Microsoft Teams

Mastering Virtual Presentations

In the era of remote work and digital classrooms, the ability to clearly present information to your colleagues is essential. Whether you are walking a client through a new PowerPoint presentation, demonstrating how a piece of software works, or collaborating on a complex spreadsheet, simply talking about the document is rarely enough. You need your audience to see exactly what you see.

Microsoft Teams provides a robust screen-sharing feature that allows you to broadcast your computer screen to everyone in the meeting. However, screen sharing can also be a source of anxiety. Nobody wants to accidentally display a private chat message or an embarrassing web browser tab to their entire department. To prevent this, Microsoft Teams offers several different presentation modes, giving you granular control over exactly what your audience can and cannot see.

Understanding the difference between sharing your entire desktop and sharing a specific application is the key to maintaining a professional presence during your virtual meetings.

How to Share Your Screen During a Meeting

You can start sharing your screen at any point during an active Microsoft Teams call.

1. Join or start your Microsoft Teams meeting.
2. Move your mouse to reveal the main meeting toolbar (this toolbar is usually located at the top-right of the window, though it may appear at the bottom in older versions of Teams).
3. Click the Share button. This button looks like a rectangle with an arrow pointing upwards inside it.
4. A panel will slide up from the bottom (or drop down from the top), presenting you with several different sharing options. Do not click anything yet. You must choose the correct mode based on what you want to present.

Option 1: Share “Screen” (or Desktop)
If you choose this option, the audience will see everything happening on your physical monitor. If you open a new window, they will see it. If an email notification pops up in the corner, they will see it. This is the best option if you need to switch rapidly between multiple different programs (e.g., showing a PDF, then switching to a web browser, then opening a spreadsheet). However, it offers zero privacy.

Option 2: Share “Window”
If you choose this option, Teams will display a grid of all the specific applications currently open on your computer (e.g., Google Chrome, Microsoft Word, Slack). If you select Microsoft Word, the audience will only see that specific Word document. If you open your email inbox over the top of the Word document, the audience will not see your emails; they will only see the Word document frozen in the background. This is the safest and most professional option for standard presentations.

Option 3: PowerPoint Live
If you are specifically presenting a PowerPoint slideshow, scroll down to the “PowerPoint Live” section and select your file. This unique mode integrates the slideshow directly into Teams, allowing you to see your presenter notes and the audience chat simultaneously, while the audience only sees the slides.

How to Include Computer Audio (Playing Videos)

If your presentation includes a video clip, a podcast excerpt, or any audio file that plays from your computer, you must explicitly tell Teams to broadcast that sound. Otherwise, the audience will see the video but hear total silence.

1. Click the Share button to open the sharing panel.
2. Look for a small toggle switch near the top right of the panel labelled Include computer sound.
3. Click the toggle to turn it On.
4. Select the Screen or Window you wish to share.

Now, any audio that plays through your computer speakers will be transmitted clearly to the meeting participants.

How to Stop Sharing Your Screen

When your presentation is finished, you must manually stop broadcasting. Closing the application you were sharing does not automatically end the screen share; it may simply leave a black screen or your desktop background visible to the audience.

1. Return to the main Microsoft Teams meeting window.
2. Look for the Share button on the toolbar. When you are actively sharing, this button changes to a rectangle with an “X” inside it.
3. Click the Stop Sharing button.

Your screen feed will instantly end, and the meeting will return to displaying the participants’ webcam video feeds.