Sharing your screen in Microsoft Teams is one of the most used features in any meeting — whether you’re presenting slides, walking someone through a document, or showing your screen for IT support. It takes two clicks once you’re in a call. Here is how.
How to Share Your Screen in a Teams Meeting
- Join or start your Teams meeting
- In the meeting toolbar at the top of the screen, click the Share button (the rectangle with an arrow pointing up)
- Choose what to share:
- Desktop — shares everything on your screen, including all open windows and notifications
- Window — shares only a single application (e.g. just PowerPoint, just Excel)
- PowerPoint Live — shares a PowerPoint presentation directly from Teams with slide navigation built in
- Whiteboard — opens a collaborative digital whiteboard
- Click on your choice — your screen share starts immediately
A red border appears around whatever you’re sharing so you can see exactly what others can see.
Sharing a Window vs Sharing Your Desktop — Which to Use?
Share a window when you only want to show one application — this prevents other windows, notifications, or private information from being visible. Share your desktop when you need to switch between multiple applications during the presentation, or when the demo requires moving between windows.
If you’re sharing your desktop, close or minimise anything you don’t want others to see before the meeting.
Sharing Audio Along with Your Screen
If you’re playing a video, audio, or anything with sound that you want attendees to hear, tick Include computer sound before clicking share. Without this, attendees will see the video but hear nothing from it — only your microphone audio comes through by default.
Giving Control to Another Participant
While sharing your screen, you can hand control to another attendee — useful for collaborative demos or when someone else needs to show something on your screen:
- While sharing, look for the sharing toolbar that appears at the top of your screen
- Click Give control
- Select the participant’s name
They can now move your mouse and interact with your screen. Click Take back control when you want to resume sole control.
Stopping Screen Share
Click the Stop sharing button in the meeting toolbar (or the sharing bar that floats at the top of your screen). Your screen immediately stops being visible to other participants.
Sharing Your Screen Before Joining a Meeting
You can’t share your screen until you’re in the meeting — there’s no way to pre-set a share. However, you can open your presentation or document before joining so it’s ready to share immediately when you need it.
Troubleshooting: Share Button Not Available
If the share button is greyed out or missing, the meeting organiser may have disabled screen sharing for participants. Ask the organiser to change the meeting options: in the meeting controls, click More options → Meeting options and change Who can present from “Only me” to “Everyone”.
