You will be able to share content online smoothly while keeping private things private.
It happens on calls every week. Someone shares their screen, and before the slides appear, everyone sees their inbox. Or a chat message pops up in the corner of the shared screen: "is this meeting going to run over again". Or the presenter shares the wrong window, spends a minute hunting for the right one, and then discovers the slides are in edit mode with the notes showing.
Screen sharing is where online presentations most often go wrong in small, embarrassing ways. Most of these problems are avoidable with a few minutes of preparation and a couple of settings. This lesson covers them.
Before you share, close every app and browser tab you will not need during the talk. Email, chat apps, personal browser tabs, documents for other projects: close them, or at least minimise them. Fewer open windows means fewer chances of sharing the wrong thing, and a faster computer.
Then turn off notifications. Most operating systems have a focus or do-not-disturb mode that silences pop-ups for a set period. Turn it on before you join the call. Check that your phone, if it is on the desk, is silenced too, because a buzzing phone is audible on many microphones.
Pay particular attention to messaging apps. A chat notification can show the sender's name and the first line of the message. You do not want a colleague's frank opinion of the meeting, or a personal message from family, appearing on everyone's screen.
Arjun learned this in his first month at the healthcare group, when a message from his mother about dinner popped up during a team presentation. Nobody minded much. He turned on do-not-disturb before every call after that.
Most video call tools, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, let you choose between sharing your entire screen and sharing a single window or application. Choose the single window whenever you can.
When you share one window, the audience sees only that window, even if a notification appears or you switch to another app. Your inbox, your chat, your desktop and anything else stay private. When you share your whole screen, they see everything you see, including every mistake.
The trade-off is that switching between windows takes a step more. If you need to show both slides and a live demonstration, you will need to stop sharing and share the other window, or share the whole screen and be extra careful. For most talks, one window, your presentation, is enough.
When you present in a room, presenter view lets you see your speaker notes and the next slide on your laptop while the audience sees only the current slide on the projector. Online, you can get the same effect if you have a second screen.
With two screens, put presenter view on one and share the window that shows the full-screen slides on the other. Practise this, because the setup varies between presentation software and video tools, and it is easy to share the presenter view by mistake, notes and all.
If you have only one screen, presenter view is harder to use cleanly. A simple alternative is to print your speaker notes, or your one-page outline from lesson 2.4, Outline your talk on one page, and keep it beside your laptop. Some people put a small window with notes next to the camera, as lesson 8.1, Camera, light and sound that make you easy to watch, suggested, but printed notes avoid any risk of sharing them.
Wei Ling uses a second monitor at home for her regional updates: presenter view on the laptop, slides shared from the monitor. When she presents from the office on her laptop alone, she prints her notes.
Before any important online talk, do a complete run-through on the platform you will actually use, ideally with one colleague on the other end. Every video tool behaves a little differently, and the problems show up only when you try.
Join the call, share your screen, click through the slides, play any video, switch between windows if you need to, and stop sharing. Ask your colleague what they see. Check that slide transitions and animations display properly, that any video plays with sound, and that text is readable at the size they see it. Lesson 4.3, Text people can read from the back of the room, covered phone-size checks.
If you are presenting on a client's or partner's platform, ask whether you can do a test session in advance. Many people do not, and discover on the day that the company's video tool works differently from the one they know.
These steps are easiest to remember as a short checklist you run before every online talk. Five items cover most of the risks: close other apps and tabs, turn on do-not-disturb on your computer and phone, choose the single window you will share, set up your notes on a second screen or on paper, and test it on the platform. In the activity, you will write your own five-item version and use it before your next video presentation.
Write a five-item tech checklist for online talks and run it before your next video presentation.
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