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 question in PowerPoint
- How to re-open your poll
- How to run your presentation automatically
- PowerPoint short cuts
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
Here is an example of a Powerpoint slide deck being presented by going into slide show mode and advancing with the 'Enter' button with dynamic updates (showing live results as they come in).
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 13 participants voted out of the 14 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-open a poll
If you need to re-open your poll (due to closing the poll too quickly, or re-explaining a concept, etc.) simply use the arrow key to go back to the previsous question slide. The poll will re-open automatically so participants can answer the question. Press Enter, an arrow or the spacebar to close your poll again. The latest voting results will now be captured in your dashboard and data report.
How to run your presentation automatically:
Want your polls to run automatically?
To set your presentation to run on its own:
Add your poll questions from the side panel into your PowerPoint slide deck. For each question and results slide, set an automatic timer using the Transitions tab in the Advance Slide settings.
Select the slides you want to have the same timing. For example, we selected the title and joining instructions slides and set a 5-second delay before advancing to the next slide.
To enable automatic progression, untick Advance on Mouse Click and tick Advance Slide After, entering your desired time in seconds.
Set the timer for each slide under the Transition tab. We chose None for the transition effect and set polling slides to advance after a 10-second delay.
Start your presentation in slideshow mode, and the slides, including the polling, will progress automatically.
Once the timer expires, the slide will automatically move to the next one without needing to press enter or use arrow keys. Keep in mind there isn’t a default time option, so you’ll need to set each timing manually.
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!