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7 Zoom Meeting Tips Every User Should Know!

It doesn't matter if you work remotely, if you work from home, or if you work from an office, chances are you are using video conferencing more and more often.

So in today's video, I wanna share with you seven of my favorite tips for getting the most out of Zoom meetings.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done, and enjoy less stress.

Mute all Zoom participants keyboard shortcut

And let's dive right in. Here I am within my Zoom meeting. And I'm sharing the screen here at the moment. But my very first tip for you has to do with one of my favorite shortcut keys.

So let me actually stop sharing for just a moment here. And I'm gonna open up my participants window here.

So often, I'm on a call with five, seven, 10, 20 or more people, and suddenly there's some background noise and it's interrupting either my presentation or something that I'm saying at the moment.

So one of my favorite shortcut keys is the ability to mute everyone, instantaneously.

Now yes, here, I can select that Mute All option, but I don't always have this window open, I may be in the middle of showing or doing something else. So all I need to do is select Alt+M on my keyboard, that's Alt+M, and that will immediately mute everyone else. Alt+M, of course, for PC, it is command control M, if you happen to be a Mac user. And if you just hit it again, of course, you're going to unmute everyone as well.

Now this can be really helpful, especially if someone else is working remotely, and you hear a dog barking or some other background noise on someone else's line. You'll notice here in the manage participants area that that microphone is moving when I'm talking. But it stops when I'm not talking. So this can be a clue for you to help find that individual if you just wanna mute that one person. But if you need to, or if you don't need the time, don't have the time to identify that individual, you can use Alt+M to mute everyone else.

So let's go into sharing my screen.

Hide floating Zoom control panel

I'm gonna share my entire desktop at the moment here. And one of my pet peeves for the longest time with using Zoom, when I'm sharing my screen, is that this little floating menu here, which is very helpful as I make different options here, it sort of hides many of my tabs.

You can see, I've got a tab open right here. You don't know how many times I've accidentally stopped sharing because I actually wanted to select this browser tab, but I hit Stop Sharing instead.

Well, there is a way that we can minimize this all together. And what you need to do is come over here to More, and come all the way down to Hide Floating Meeting Controls.

Now yes, there is a shortcut key Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H, I don't know how much of a shortcut that is, if you need four keys to do so. So I usually just select this manually. But if I select this, you can see that that floating Zoom menu is gone.

So now I can go here, I can click through all these tabs at ease. Nothing is in my way. And if I need to get back to that menu, all I need to do is select Escape on my keyboard. Very quickly, one more time Hide Floating Meeting Controls, it's telling me right here, press Escape. If I need to show it again, I can go about my presentation, I can use my computer the way I want. And then I can hit Escape to get that menu back and visible to me.

All right, let's go back at this time around.

Turn off Zoom video by default

I’m gonna stop sharing, and I’m actually gonna go into my settings here, my Zoom meeting settings. Let’s go back; here we are in the desktop app. Let me just move my picture here for a second.

And what we’re gonna do is hit this little gear icon, which is called Settings. Now, there’s an awful lot of settings that you can tweak and adjust here within Zoom, but I wanna focus on two important ones, or at least they’re very important to me.

The first one is under Video. Yes, you can preview your video, you can choose a different camera if you need to here as well. But the one that I always turn on is this one: Turn off my video when joining a meeting.

By default, whether I’m the host or whether I’m joining someone else’s Zoom meeting, I want my video to be turned off. Now the reasoning for this is that I wanna make sure that I initiate that video. I don’t want to click a link on something and then forget that, "Oh, yeah, that’s right, I’m on video, and what’s behind me or what’s going on? Do I have my mic set up?" All of this type of thing.

So by default, I wanna have my video turned off when I either host or join any type of Zoom meeting, and then I can initiate it, right? I can initiate it with a single click.

Virtual backgrounds for Zoom

The other tip that I wanna share with you here within settings has to do with video, but it concerns something called Virtual Background. This is a feature that Zoom has had for a while, but maybe you’ve never experimented with it before.

So here you can see I’ve got nothing in the background—just the background of my office. But what Zoom allows you to do is upload other images to use as your background, and you don’t need a green screen.

You can select from one of the default images, or you can upload your own images or even video backgrounds. For instance, here are some options like the Northern Lights and a tropical seaside. But the one I use most often is one that I created. It’s very simple—mostly black with my logo in the corner.

The reason I use this virtual background frequently is that it hides any distractions in the background. I might be working from a busy cafe or a kitchen island at home, and I don’t have to worry about what’s behind me, like a fridge or a dirty stove.

Another nice benefit is that it allows me to add some branding. You can see my logo in the top corner here. You can also add your full name, an icon, or your preferred colors. It’s a great way to keep things professional and consistent with your brand.

Zoom calendar add-on for Google & Outlook

And the next one on our list I wanna show you is actually something that I use every single day.

In fact, this is probably the most used feature that I use when it comes to Zoom.

And it has to do with scheduling your meetings.

So I'm gonna jump into Google Calendar, and I'm gonna open up this little fake meeting that I set up here, and I'm gonna go into the edit mode.

Whether you use Microsoft Outlook or whether you use Google Calendar, I implore you to download and use the add ons or extensions for your calendar.

So in this case, I have the Google Calendar, the Google Chrome extension installed.

You can see up here I've got that little icon, this allows me to schedule a meeting, if I want to, or I can start a meeting immediately.

It even gives me conveniently the option to start with video off, or start with video on.

But the other bonus, as you can see here, as I'm creating this meeting within Google calendars, I have an additional button, called Make it a Zoom Meeting.

So as I'm adding the title, and my guests, and maybe a few other details, with just a single click, I can say make it a zoom meeting.

And here I've got that meeting link here, under the location area.

And if I scroll down to the description, it's got all this other great information, which my guests are going to need, whether it's the link, I mean, they can click this link right away, but depending on where they are, they can use the one tap mobile option.

If they need to dial in by a phone, if they can't connect by audio, by their computer, they can choose one of these dial-in numbers as well, all in a single click.

And then when I come back in here, when it's time for this meeting, all I have to do is select Join the Zoom Meeting.

I don't have to click somewhere else, I don't have to go to the Zoom interface, I can just say Join the Zoom Meeting, and it's gonna launch it for me, and dive right in.

So whether you're an Outlook user, or a Google user, please, please download the extension

New Share and Pause Share when sharing Zoom screen

So that you can get even more out of this tool.

Now the other thing that I wanna show you, and we'll just stick on this dummy meeting invite here, is a couple of settings here, a couple of options, I should say, with this floating menu.

And the two in particular are New Share and Pause Share.

So at the moment, I'm sharing my screen right now, pretty common, pretty standard here within Zoom.

But a lot of people are not familiar with what these actually mean, or how they should be using them.

So in this case, if I wanna move from this, showing you my browser here, and I wanna go to say a Word document, all I need to do is select New Share, and now I can go and find that other document or that other place, that I would like to share.

So let's say it is a Word document, so I'm gonna click on this Word document.

Remember, no one in my meeting is seeing this window.

I'm seeing this because I'm the organizer and I'm wanting to share something at the moment.

As soon as I click on this, this Word document and select Share, I'm instantly taken to that Word document, and so is everyone else that is viewing this screen share.

So they don't see any of that me selecting it, they don't see me looking for a folder, nothing along those likes.

And if I wanna go back up here, and I say New Share, and I wanna go back to the web, I can select it and say Share, I'm instantaneously brought back here.

So you can remove all sort of that clunky feeling of minimizing, maximizing, finding the thing that you wanna share next, make it a really smooth transition for those people who are on the meeting with you.

The other one is Pause Share.

Now this can be used very similarly, if I want to say, you know, just pause, and here you can see your screen sharing is paused, and then I could go and find that document.

But the other great thing I find about the pause function is that, let's say I'm giving a presentation, I want to review some notes, or I want to go look something else up, but I don't want everyone else to know that I'm looking that up or I'm finding this special number or whatever the case may be, I can hit pause and they can remain on this screen, it's as if nothing else has happened.

I can go back and find some information, go reference a file, that type of thing.

And then when I'm ready, I can just say Resume Share, and here I am back on this screen.

I can hit pause, and I could go somewhere else as well if I want to, but take a look at both New Share and Pause Share to make your presentations and make your screen sharing just a little more polished.

How to annotate in Zoom

And then the last thing, the final tip today that I wanna share with you has to do with annotations.

Something that I think it's overlooked.

Here it is, it's the very last option before More, and yet it's so valuable.

If you click Annotate, there's a variety of different ways that you can highlight things on your screen.

A few of my favorites, one would be Spotlight.

Here, it adds a little red spotlight, so if people have trouble following your cursor, you wanna make sure people know exactly what you're talking about, they can follow you along with this little red spotlight.

There's also this little arrow, it's like an arrow stamp.

So if I want people to look at this Guests field, I can click over here, or I can highlight and then click.

Do you see this little white arrow, no one is seeing this, no one on my meeting is actually seeing this.

It's not until I click on it, it's gonna put this little stamp here with my name, so they know that I'm the one who placed it there.

Because remember, you can allow other people to annotate as well.

And if you want to undo or redo, you can always click these buttons here as well, or hit clear to clear all of your drawings.

You can draw, you can add text, you can add other stamps.

This arrow is a little bit different.

This allows you to keep permanent arrows.

So instead of one at a time, I can go down a variety of fields here.

And again, I can hit undo if I wanna go back, or just clear all my drawing.

So Annotate can be a really helpful one as well.

So I'd love to hear from you next.

Which of these seven tips were your favorite?

And did I miss anything?

Is there a special Zoom meeting tip that you love to use?

Make sure you share that with us, and with the rest of the Simpletivity community down below.

Thanks so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple!

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