I’ve done plenty of Zoom calls and PowerPoints separately, but never both at the same time. Can I, or do I need two PCs?
The situation: an in-person meeting where we will show a PPT using a Dell laptop connected to a projector. We’d also like to let people Zoom in to the meeting. The Zoom part will probably be one-way. We’ll want a live camera to show the speakers, and will switch the Zoom feed to the PPT at some points.
We probably won’t have people Zooming in address the people in the meeting, or share their screens, but if that’s possible, please explain how.
ISTM that even if it’s possible on one computer, it’ll be a bit of a pain for one operator to try to coordinate both the PPT presentation and the Zoom meeting.
What do you think? Easy-peasy? Possible, but a headache? Impossible?
Set up the laptop with 2 monitors - one is the laptop screen and the second one is the projector. Put the powerpoint on the projector screen, and the zoom meeting on the laptop screen.
Absolutely. It’s kind of a core feature of things like MS Teams and Zoom. You can share and un-share your screen throughout the meeting as you see fit. If you set the projector up as a second screen, rather than just mirroring your primary screen, then fumbling the two programs is extremely easy.
If you don’t care about audience interaction on Zoom, you don’t even need to see the Zoom window. You can show the presentation on the projector, use the laptop screen for the preview, set Zoom to show the presentation window, and then just keep Zoom minimized in the background for the rest of the talk.
However, that’s a good way to make sure your audience just tunes you out and works on other stuff during the presentation.
If it’s a one-way, non-interactive presentation, why not just record the presentation for them so they can watch it on their own and not have to wait around while you fiddle with windows and sharing and microphones, etc.?
On the other hand, if you actually want a two-way, interactive meeting:
When we ran webinars during COVID for an online audience, we did use multiple computers. The main laptop was for the speaker doing the presentation; sometimes the speaker would control it themselves with a wireless presentation remote, or an assistant would help them.
Another computer would be there specifically to manage Zoom as a separate audience. This computer’s Zoom would be logged in as a co-host and utilize Zoom’s powerful meeting moderation functions. For example, the audience would normally be muted and unable to speak/share on their own. However, they can type questions into the chat and/or raise their hands to be put in a queue for questions. The moderator would then wait for a good time during the meeting to say “Hey presenter, we have a couple questions from Zoom”. And then they’d either read aloud the text questions themselves, or they can choose to allow the question asker to speak and share their screen. Afterward, they’d clear the raised hand and move to the next person in the queue.
The controls are powerful enough that it’s probably worth doing a dry run with the host and co-host and a fake audience member or two. That way everyone can see how the controls work and not have to fiddle with it too much during the live presentation. It takes a few min to get used to, but used well, they can make a hybrid meeting (as in in-person + online) much more interesting and interactive for both sets of audiences.
If you have a monitor connected to a laptop, and Zoom that way, it is identical to having a projector hooked up. I don’t run Webinar zoom meetings, but regular Zoom meetings show thumbnails of the audience on top of the shared screen.
Yes, it is a good idea to have someone not the speaker run the meeting and collect comments. I’m Zoom-master of our writing club, and let people in, but now I’m also president and have to run the meeting also. Kind of a pain. If it gets too much of a pain I can let someone else be co-host.
I’ve had audience members share their screens in business type Zoom meetings, but it has never come up in a speaker situation. It is possible, but it always takes a while and provides an opportunity for problems.
That’s a big part of the Zoom moderator’s responsibilities (managing the audience). They’re the one who would go “Joe, are you there? Hmm. Looks like Joe is having some technical problems, let’s move to the next person and we’ll circle back to Joe later.” Then the presentation continues and the moderator chats with Joe in a DM to work it out, or just asks them to type their question.
They would also consolidate similar questions, like “And we have a few questions about ______ and how _____. What do you think?”
The presenter normally doesn’t have the time to handle all that during the live talk, so having someone else co-host and moderate is often the difference between a well-run, professional webinar and a amateurish mess filled with “Hello? Can you hear me?” from random people joining halfway through.
Zoom offers the tools to make this really seamless, but you have to learn to use them and practice beforehand.
I tried to do a brief test today before today’s meeting got started, and when I launched Zoom, the PPT, which was cycling pictures automatically every 5 seconds, stopped, and the clicker no longer controlled the slides.
Hard to say without seeing it. Can you record the process on your phone?
Maybe Zoom took PowerPoint out of full screen mode and it automatically paused? You should be able to make sure Zoom is targeting the right window and then just resume the presentation.
Doesn’t really address my point. I’ve been running Zoom meetings for my club since we moved online during Covid. I’ve trained people to raise their hand for questions for the speaker. That works very well. But there is no reason for someone with a question to share their screen.
There is an option under Slide Show to automatically advance to the next slide, which is helpful if you use PowerPoint for, say, a display of pictures. Maybe you enabled that by mistake? Under Durations there is an Advance Slide option, which can be after a mouse click or after a certain amount of time. Maybe that’s it.
Sorry, it wasn’t meant to challenge your point, just provide additional commentary.
If your viewers never need to share their screens, great. One less thing that could go wrong. But depending on the talk, sometimes that’s needed, or at least sometimes they want to show their camera and use their mic.
Having a designated moderator deal with all that allows the speaker to focus on the presentation and makes the overall flow smoother.
If audience interaction isn’t needed, then that’s unnecessary.
I don’t use the webinar version, and in my version I can mute people but never turn on their mics. Ditto for video. Makes sense, since I would suppose there could be all kinds of problems if you turned on someone’s video without warning.
People do share their screens during committee reports, but that kind of meeting has no guests and is a bit more flexible than a bunch of members and an outside speaker.
We have speakers log in early so they can test screen sharing and get comfortable. It is surprising how many feel better about doing this.
Okay, so I tried again today at home with an external monitor instead of projector (functionally equivalent) and when I switch the focus from PowerPoint to Zoom, the presentation stops. Auto-advance slides stop advancing, and the clicker doesn’t advance them either.
So I think that either those of you who say one computer can do both are mistaken, or are not understanding what I’m trying to do, or I’m not understanding what you are telling me.
BTW, Windows 10 Pro, MS Office Professional Plus 2016.
There’s probably more than one right way (and many wrong ways) to do this, but this is what worked for me… (at least on Office 365; sorry, I don’t have access to Office 2016):
Have Zoom open already in the background.
Start the Powerpoint slideshow in dual-window mode, with the presenter view on the laptop and the presentation on the external monitor/projector
Click the “show taskbar” button in the presenter view (or use alt-tab if you don’t have that) to switch to the Zoom window.
In the Zoom meeting, click the Share button.
Under “Application windows”, choose the presentation (not the presenter view). It should now start sharing.
Switch back to the presenter view on the laptop and continue with the presentation.
(Optionally, you can verify that the screen sharing is working by expanding the green dropdown under the “Share” button on the floating Zoom toolbar)
There’s probably small differences depending on your Office and Zoom versions, but that should be the general flow of things…
Here’s a video (sorry for the shitty quality; I ain’t no fancy streamer lol):
Probably what is going on is that Zoom is fighting Powerpoint (especially the full-screen presentation view) for focus, and Powerpoint is auto-pausing on focus loss. But anyway, just let Zoom take over for a sec, start the share, and then switch back to Powerpoint and Zoom should keep on going in the background without disturbing the presentation after that… in theory…
Generally speaking, it’s easier to manage screen shares when you don’t have to use full-screen and can just have the presentation in one normal window and Zoom in another normal window, and then you can easily control both by switching between them.
If you must have it full-screen, then you’ll have to keep Zoom in the background (after starting the share) and then stay in the presentation. That’s a situation where having a second laptop and another person playing Zoomdaddy would help, so you can just stay in the presentation and they can do everything else. Failing that, alt-tab is your friend to let you easily switch between apps even in full screen.
Yes, this is exactly what is happening, and what it means in practice is that I can’t really run both at the same time, since a presenter will want to advance slides at their own pace. If I’m doing anything at all with Zoom when they want the next slide, they won’t be able to.
In theory, if I could get Zoom going and do nothing else with it while the slide show was going, or if I was controlling the slides and could switch from Zoom back to PPT whenever the next slide was needed, it would probably…maybe be okay. Kinda. But in the real world, it’s just asking for problems.
So I’m not going to try to do that. The next step is seeing how running PPT on one PC and Zoom on the other works. I’ll report back with results if anyone is interested.
Wait, are you doing the presenting or is someone else? Because the way we do it I’m running Zoom and the presenter, who is sharing their screen on their Zoom session, advances their slides. We do this all the time with no problems. And while they are doing that I can let people in or set up Zoom rooms or do anything else.
I haven’t tried doing this when I’m sharing my screen, but I think it is possible. But distracting.
In general I agree with Reply’s advice. I can’t see any reason to run either of these things full screen - the presentation will look like full screen to viewers. (Or almost full screen, minus the people thumbnails.)
The presenter is not sharing their screen on Zoom. This is an in-person meeting and the presenter is presenting the PPT on a projection screen with a video projector connected to the PC. When any other app has the focus of the PC, the PPT freezes.
Well, if you want to share the presentation directly (instead of a camera’s view of the presentation), the presenter’s computer has to share it from that same computer. (The second laptop doesn’t have the presentation and thus can’t share it…)
Where the 2nd laptop comes in handy is if you do need to moderate or otherwise interact with Zoom during the presentation. In that situation, you’d log in with a second Zoom session (and probably a second Zoom account) and then assign co-host privileges to that second user.
So it’d be something like:
Laptop #1: Runs Powerpoint and Zoom. Starts sharing in Zoom, switches back to PPT.
Laptop #2: Runs Zoom and connects to the meeting started by laptop #1. Is given co-host privileges to help moderate.
But the presenter’s laptop would still be the same situation: That computer has to run both apps, but focus has to stay in Powerpoint to properly advance the slides.
Either way, though, once Zoom starts sharing and goes to the background, the presenter’s computer shouldn’t have to keep interacting with it unless something goes wrong. But if you needed to chat with the audience, manage raised hands, etc., then yeah it would be better to do that from a 2nd laptop.
Fundamentally, though, I don’t think there is an easy way around the focus loss issue. Powerpoint needs focus to keep going on its own, and the presentation remote is basically just a fake keyboard that just sends the next/back keys to whatever window is in focus. Either way, the presenter’s computer needs to start the Zoom and then switch back to Powerpoint.
Your OP says that people are Zooming into the meeting. If you expect them to see the PPT presentation, then the presenter has to share their screen on Zoom. The only alternative would be that remote attendees get a PPT deck and play along as the presenter goes through the deck.
It’s far simpler to separate presenter and Zoom master duties. I know Zoom does a popup if someone is in the waiting room while you are sharing, and I think no one else sees it. I’m not sure why you would want to not have the focus on the PPT window otherwise.