What Add-in are you using?
Here is a quick overview of adding & presenting your polls with the Office 365 Add-in.
In this article we cover:
How to poll your questions to your participants:
To poll your question with your participants simply enter slideshow mode and run your presentation.
When you created your PowerPoint slide deck and added your polls to the presentation, each poll added created two slides per poll in your slide deck:
1. The question slide and
2. The result slide
Don't delete the question or the result slide in your PowerPoint slide deck for the poll you want to ask.
Here is an example of a Powerpoint slide deck being presented by going into slide show mode and advancing with the 'Enter' button.
Remember the following when presenting your polls:
In the normal PowerPoint view, the Result slide placeholders & lines will disappear once you go into slide show mode.
With the Office 365 Add-in, you only need to 'Enter' through the slides. The control box in the top right-hand corner of your slide will indicate what stage your poll is in.
This control box is an indicator and a good reminder that this slide contains an interactive poll.
When you advance from a normal slide (with no poll) to a slide with an interactive poll on, the poll will automatically open. (You might briefly see the control box changing from 'Question slide' to 'Open Poll'.)
As soon as the Control box indicates that the poll is open, participants can start to enter their votes and choices.
Use the response counter (top left) to decide when to close the poll by pressing 'Enter' again. In the example above, the response counter shows that 10 participants voted out of the 12 participants that are connected.
When you press the 'Enter' button the control box will automatically change from 'Open poll' to 'Showing Results'. ( Note that you might briefly see the control box displaying the words 'Preparing results' before it changes to 'Showing results'. This is normal and no action is needed.
As soon as you have displayed the results long enough for all to see and interpret, you can advance to your next poll by pressing the 'Enter' button again - this will open the next poll. Proceed to the end of your slide deck as you would normally do.
Re-running a poll
If you need to re-run your poll (due to closing the poll too quickly, or re-explaining a concept, etc.) do the following:
Exit slide show mode by pressing 'Escape'.
Ensure you are on the slide that contains the results for the poll you want to re-run.
Select the 'Clear results' option at the bottom of the task pane (right side of your window).
A pop-up window will appear, asking you if you want to clear all the slides or just the current slide. (It will also confirm what slide is currently selected in the slide deck). Choose 'current'.
In your task pane on the right, choose that poll again, and add it to your slide deck by clicking on the 'Add' button. The poll will now be added to the end of your slide deck.
Go into slide show mode to the question slide (second last) again and re-run your poll.
PowerPoint short cuts
PowerPoint has some simple, yet very effective keyboard short cuts to allow you to take the focus off the screen, jump to a supporting slide or run an ad-hoc audience vote WITHOUT needing to exit ‘slide show’.
Whilst in 'slide show' simply…
- Hit ‘B’- to turn the screen black
- Hit ‘W’- to turn the screen white
- (Press the same keys again to return to the presentation)
- Enter the slide number you wish to display and hit ‘Enter’ to ‘jump’ to a slide. Great for ad hoc polls or hidden slides!
In this article we cover:
This video explains how to set up your laptop for PowerPoint polling.
To poll your question with your participants simply enter slideshow mode and run your presentation.
A quick way of entering slideshow mode in PowerPoint is by pressing the F5 key on your keyboard. This will take you to the start of your presentation. You can use 'Enter', 'Right Arrow' or 'Spacebar' to advance to the next slide.
There are 3 stages to running an interactive slide in PowerPoint.
- Ready
- Poll open
- Results
1. Ready
When your interactive poll slide is on screen this is the first stage that displays the text of the question. A control box will display on screen.
By default, this box appears in the top left corner of the screen. You can alter the setting of this box in the preferences menu in the PowerPoint ribbon under Poll Control > Position.
This control box is an indicator and a good reminder that this slide contains an interactive question. When you advance the slide the interactive poll will move to the second stage.
2. Poll Open
Once the poll is open the control box will change and display the number of respondents that are voting.
When ready to close the poll simply advance the slide as you normally would by pressing the 'Enter' key.
3. Results
When closing the poll, the results will be calculated and displayed in the presentation and on all connected devices.
Note that unlike Present view, the responses can only be viewed once the poll is closed in the PowerPoint add-in.
PowerPoint short cuts
PowerPoint has some simple, yet very effective keyboard short cuts to allow you to take the focus off the screen, jump to a supporting slide or run an ad-hoc audience vote WITHOUT needing to exit ‘slide show’.
Whilst in 'slide show' simply…
- Hit ‘B’- to turn the screen black
- Hit ‘W’- to turn the screen white
- (Press the same keys again to return to the presentation)
- Enter the slide number you wish to display and hit ‘Enter’ to ‘jump’ to a slide. Great for ad hoc polls or hidden slides!
Troubleshooting
