Sharing your screen in Zoom is a must-know skill, but do you know these seven tips?
In today's video, I wanna show you not only everything that you need to know about screen sharing, but things that are gonna make it so much easier for you including how to prevent participants from doing certain things.
Hello everyone, Scott Frisen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And let's start off with a shortcut key.
Keyboard shortcuts for sharing your Zoom screen
to make your life so much simpler. So for example, you are probably very familiar with how to share a screen. All you have to do is come down here and select this button, share screen, and that's pretty easy to bring you up to this dialogue prompt.
But, isn't it a bit easier if we just put alt S on our keyboard? Alt S will also bring up that dialogue box whether you have this window maximized or maybe you have this minimized. Maybe you're somewhere else. I can just put alt S or if you're a Mac user, you can select command shift S, and that will immediately bring up your share dialogue. But there's something else that I like to point out with this is that often I will give this tip to some of my participants, if I want them to share their screen. You don't know how many times I have been trying to tell them or try to help them navigate where to find this share screen button. It's so much easier if I just let them know,
hey just hit alt S on your keyboard and we can get right to sharing your screen.
How to stop participants from Zoom screen sharing
Now let's move on to tip number two and this actually has to do with the opposite.
That is actually preventing someone from sharing their screen.
Because you wanna be in control, right? You want to say who and when can share their screen. Instead of them taking over your meeting.
So what Zoom has done is they've conveniently added a security button here in our tool bar.
And we select on security, you can see that there's a few options here including the ability to allow or not allow participants to share their screens.
So here you can see I have it unchecked, meaning, anyone who is in this meeting with me, they cannot share their screen unless I come in here and select this.
If I check this, now my participants are allowed to share their screen with me and share their screen with others.
However, this is probably on by default. So what I like to do is going into my Zoom settings and change it so this is unchecked by default so I can always make sure that I remember I don't have to remember, I should say, to come in here and uncheck that.
So let me show you how to do that. Here I am within my Zoom settings, within the Zoom.us website.
And after you've logged into your account, you want to select settings and we are wanting to scroll down a little bit to the second header which is called in meeting basic.
Now we wanna scroll down just a little bit further here until we get to our screen sharing settings.
Most likely this is already set, right? 'Cause that's a standard feature within Zoom to be able to share your screen.
But it's the second option, who can share? By default it probably is set to all participants.
Now you may be hesitant to say host only, only yourself or if you make someone else a co-host.
But remember, this doesn't actually prevent other users from sharing, what it means is that that checkbox that I just showed you is always going to be unchecked.
So whenever you start a meeting, when you have host only set on your user account, on your settings, this is always going to start a meeting with this unchecked.
And then when you want to allow someone else to share their screen, you can come in here, select security and turn that on.
So a helpful tip, especially if you don't want other people hijacking your meeting, even though they were supposed to be in your meeting, you don't want to allow them that control to start sharing whenever they want to.
How to optimize Zoom screen sharing for video
Now let's go to another screen sharing tip.
This one has to do with sharing video because we often wanna share a YouTube video or maybe some other type of video that you already have on your machine.
And many people have been complaining that oh it's really either fuzzy or it's choppy or they can't quite hear the audio.
Well before you share your video, whether it's online or on your system, be sure to come down here and check this checkbox.
Optimize screen sharing for video clip.
You wanna check this box which is also going to automatically check this one, share computer sound, because we obviously want to share the audio when we're sharing that video.
But, this is going to increase your chances for the best viewing experience for your participants.
Now it's not going to guarantee that it's a flawless experience because remember, your bandwidth but also your participants' individual bandwidth is going to contribute to how they view this or what type of quality they experience.
But to have the highest quality, to optimize your video clips, make sure you check this box before you go and select YouTube or before you go and select something on your screen.
How to share only a section of your Zoom screen
All right, we're gonna stick here within the sharing dialogue for tip number four.
And this one has to do with sharing just a portion of our screen.
So let me cancel out of this for just a second and let's say that I've opened up a PDF document. However, I don't wanna share the whole toolbar, maybe I have some notes or other things here on the right hand side, I just wanna share the text, but I don't wanna hide all this other stuff because I might be doing other things, I just don't want them to see that.
So when I go to share, when I go back here, let's open up our share screen here.
I'm gonna click on advanced. Basic is the one that we always see by default, but let's click on advanced and here we have the option to share a portion of our screen.
So by selecting this, we go back to our PDF example here, and here you see I have a green, rectangular area here, and the green means that this is what I'm sharing in the moment.
Now that green color is key and we're gonna see that on a future tip as well.
What I can do is I can click on this larger part here at the top and I can drag it around. Now while I'm dragging it turns yellow, that means that my screen sharing is paused, they're just seeing this while I drag things around and when I release it, we're back to green. Now I'm only sharing this area here.
So I can go over here and make changes or reference things or go up to the file menu and they're not gonna see any of that.
Now you can always resize this window. If I wanna drag this over and make sure that I'm capturing everything here.
You can resize it at any time, just remember while you're resizing it's gonna be paused as well, green means go, green means that you are sharing at that point in time.
So if you only wanna share half or a portion of your screen, that's gonna be something that's very helpful to you.
How to poll your Zoom participants
Now, let's move on to tip number five, which is going to greatly enhance your meetings especially if you want to get your participants involved.
And tip number five has to do with polling your audience.
So down below here in my Zoom menu, you see I have a polls button.
Now you may not see this immediately because this is often not turned on by default. Let's go see where we can turn that.
We wanna jump back into our Zoom settings and we are back, this is setting, we are still under the meeting tab and yes, we're actually still gonna go to the in meeting basic header.
And if we scroll down just a little bit further, you're gonna come across this option called polling.
Now as I said, there's a good chance that this is turned off by default, you just need to hit this switch, and you will have polling options available to you.
So how do you create your first poll?
Well, you're gonna wanna stay here within your Zoom account and this time we're gonna click on meetings.
The meetings tab of course is where you're gonna see all of your upcoming meetings. And I've created one here called test meeting. All you need to do is go into your meeting in advance, of course, and scroll down to the bottom.
Now at the very bottom here you're gonna have an option here to add polls.
Now I've already added one here. Let me just delete this one so you can see what it's gonna look like before you create your first poll.
So again, I'm just inside this particular meeting, I've scrolled down to the bottom and it's got this little area that says you have not created any poll yet.
So all I need to do is hit this add button and we're gonna get this menu here where we can set up multiple simple polls.
So I'm gonna create a quick one for you here, I'm gonna call this one phone type, the first field is just the title of the poll, it's not actually the question.
You can choose if you wanna make it anonymous or not. In many cases I like this option because I want people to be as honest with me and everyone else on the call as possible, so you don't need to track or share who said what.
And I'm just gonna say what type of phone do you have? It's a very simple question here.
Now, it's a multiple choice answer as you can see down below. You must have at least two answers, but there is an option here above.
You can either make it a single choice answer or a multiple choice answer. Meaning single choice they can only pick one of your options or multiple choice meaning they can pick more than one.
In this case I wanna leave it at single choice and I'm gonna say Android or iPhone or other, those are the three choices that I'm gonna give them there and if I scroll down to the bottom, I can hit save.
Now you can add more questions that are going to be tagged on to this, meaning that as soon as they answer this question, if you add another question here, they are immediately gonna be presented with that second or that third question, however many you add here.
But in this case, I'm just gonna hit save, I'm just gonna have that one poll question.
So if I come down here, you can see that poll question. I can add another one.
Now the difference here between the add here versus the one that I just showed you, is that it's gonna be a separate poll question, right? Maybe I want to ask them another question later on in the meeting.
That's why it can be helpful to add separate ones here if you don't have ones that should be answered all at the same time.
So now let's jump back into our meeting. We're gonna come down here and select polls.
And this is a different meeting that I'm sharing at this point in time so I got a few different questions here.
This dialogue will pop up but don't worry, no one is seeing anything just yet. Remember that green color, well we're gonna see that green color again just here.
First off, I have a drop down area here, so I can choose. I've got two different polls set up for this meeting. So I can choose which one that I want to ask. Maybe I want to ask polling question number two.
I can also edit my polling questions on the fly, right? If I wanna quickly add another option or something like that. But in this case I'm gonna leave it like this.
Now again, even though I've selected that, no one is seeing anything just yet, nothing until I hit the launch polling button.
I'm gonna select that and there's that green color, right? That's telling us that now this is being shared, now all the participants of this meeting can participate and vote on this poll.
There's a timer here to let me know how much time has passed and it'll also show me what percentage of people have contributed to this poll.
When I want to, when I'm satisfied, I can come down here and select end polling. That green color's gonna go away so once again they're not gonna see any of these results.
If I had participants in this example, we would see the results here, but, everyone else will not see those results until I say so.
If I come down here to the bottom, I select share results, once again there's that green indicator, that green color telling me, okay now this is being shared with everyone, everyone can see the results of this poll.
And when I'm satisfied, I can just come down here and say stop share results. I'm brought back to this menu, which again is not shared.
I can pick another poll question, or close this in case I want to share a poll a little later on.
So something that is fantastic for making your webinars or your meetings that much more engaging here on Zoom.
How to annotate your shared Zoom screen
Next up we wanna talk about annotation, so let's go back to sharing our screen here.
I'm gonna go back to this PDF document. And instead of sharing just a portion I'm sharing my entire screen.
Don't forget about the power of annotating or marking up your screen.
So if I select the annotate button here from the menu I get a great list of things that I can do.
I can draw free hand here, I've got a little pencil. If I wanna highlight or circle something on the screen. If I don't like it I can just say undo or I can hit clear.
You can add text, you can add spotlights, you can stamp things.
This stamp thing I think is one of my favorites, where I can just go over and say okay, point your eyes up here and then I want you to come down and read this and then we're gonna go over here and review this point and that type of thing.
So lots of things that you can experiment with annotating here within Zoom.
But that also brings me to my last and final tip.
How to stop participants from annotating in Zoom
And that is preventing others from annotating on your screen.
I've heard from many of you complain that other people are jumping on and they're adding things and I don't want them to add things while I'm sharing things or while I'm annotating on my shared screen.
Well, all you need to do is come back up here and select this security bar. And when you are annotating you will get another option here that is called annotate on shared content.
You can see it as checked at the moment meaning that other participants right now could come in here and start writing their own text or start drawing.
All I need to do is select that and now that prevents my participants from doing so.
Now there's one other place you can go to make this change and that is under more. And that is allow participants to annotate, 'cause remember, we just disabled it.
I can select this and now they are able to write on my screen. They can share things. So either place, it does the same thing. Either under more, you can say disable or allow. Or under security, you can check or uncheck your options there.
Well I hope you enjoyed today's video and I would love to hear from you next. What was your favorite tip amongst all of my Zoom screen sharing tips today?
Be sure to let me know down below in the comments. Thank you so much for watching and remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact it's very simple.
