Video conferencing is not going away, and people are now interested in learning a bit more. Read on for some useful Zoom screen sharing tips.
Sometimes screen sharing is a little bit confusing. Let’s just walk through it step by step.
Turning on Zoom Screen Sharing
In any Zoom meeting, if you see a green icon in the center bottom area of the screen, you can share your screen. Not every meeting allows screen sharing. A grey icon (not green), indicates that you may not be allowed to share in this meeting.
If your screen is small and not all of the icons on the bottom are visible, it may be on the top or you may need to click on three dots to see more options.
The screen sharing icon also has a small ^ circumflex next to it. If you click on the circumflex you will see these Advanced Sharing Options.
If you are hosting the meeting, the following options will be available. This way you can change who can share their screen while you are in the meeting.
Default settings are determined in the settings portion of the Zoom.us web page.
Instead of clicking on the circumflex, now click on the green Share button itself.
Choose what to share
This window will pop up. In the Basic section, you will see all of the windows that are open on your computer, as well as some general options.
Starting across the top left. The first option, is to share your entire desktop. This allows you to go back and forth between windows while you are sharing and still allows the meeting participants to see what you are doing.
Any of the individual window options will only share the contents of that single window. If you switch to another window during the meeting, the participants will not be able to see what you are doing in the other windows.
The white board is like having an empty page that you and other participants can write on and mark up. This is a good tool for collaboration.
Only the audio through your microphone will be shared by default. If you also want to share the sounds the computer makes, including the audio of a video you might be showing, use this Zoom screen sharing tip.
Select Share Sound in the bottom-left corner of the share selection window.
Then you click on Share in the bottom-right corner to begin sharing with your device’s audio included.
Advanced Screen Share Options
There are additional sharing options available as well. Click on Advanced in the initial setup of the screen share.
The choices that come up allow you to share in more finely tuned way.
Sharing slides as a virtual background displays your image in front of the slides you are presenting. This looks a little bit like a person standing in front of a group with their slides projected behind them.
If you choose to share a portion of the screen this allows you to really fine tunes part of your screen that will be displayed.
Computer audio is for sharing ONLY the audio coming from the computer.
The Video choice is specifically for sharing a video.
Content from a second camera is also very specific for some users who can use this.
Getting the Zoom header out of your way
When you are screen sharing, you will have some controls at the top of your screen. These controls sometimes get in the way of what you are trying to do in the windows you are sharing. The other meeting attendees can’t see these controls.
Sometimes all that is needed is to move the window down a little bit to clear the controls.
Alternately, you can click on the three dots at the left of the controls and choose to hide the floating meeting controls.
In the same way, you can move/hide the thumbnail images of the meeting attendees. They generally default to top right of the screen, and again sometimes get in the way of what you are trying to do when sharing your screen!
Many people are intimidated by Zoom Screen Sharing. Follow these few Zoom screen sharing tips, and we think you might find that it isn’t that hard to do.
If you would like help with this process, just call or email and we’ll be happy to assist you! If you have specific questions, or if our terminology isn’t clear, please use our contact form to send us a message. Thank you!