Earlier this year,Microsoft announced that Live Presentations was coming soon, and we are excited to share that it is now generally available on PowerPoint for the web.
When Microsoft first announced PowerPoint Live, we saw excitement from both enterprise and education customers around how this feature could be utilized during in-person events—conferences, lecture halls, corporate all hands, town halls, and more. Of course, the world has changed a lot since then.
Microsoft know that as more physical events and meetings take place, PowerPoint Live will prove to be a very useful tool for connecting with your audience and communicating more effectively, which Microsoft are excited to show you. However, Microsoft also have tips below on how to use this capability now in remote work and learning scenarios.
Providing a personalized presentation experience to each audience member
Every presenter knows how hard it is to get—and keep—your audience truly engaged throughout a presentation. The PowerPoint Live experience can assist users in making their presentations engaging and inclusive.
Everyone in the audience is able to connect from their device (laptop, tablet, or phone) where they can follow along with the presentation, and they can also move back through the slides at their own pace without impacting the presenter. The audience can also provide instant feedback to the presenter in the form of live reactions—and provide comments and rate the presentation at the end.
In addition to all these capabilities, with the power of artificial intelligence (AI), everyone in the audience can enable live subtitles in their preferred language on their own device. It will help not only support participants with hearing disabilities, but also break language barriers and make sure that everyone in the audience is engaged and included.
After the live session, audience members can provide feedback to the presenter, via an optional survey powered by Microsoft Forms, so the presenter can receive responses and recommendations on how to improve their presentation skills.
Now you’re probably wondering: How can I use this feature today while working and learning remotely? While we know that Live will shine in these in-person settings, even though we are not always physically in the same room, Live Presentations in PowerPoint for the web is still available to be utilized today.
How to use Live Presentations remotely
If you’re utilizing a video conferencing tool like Microsoft Teams, simply connect to the Teams call and share the screen where you are opening the presentation in PowerPoint for web and click “Present Live.” At this point, everyone on the Teams call can see the QR code and short URL link they can use to connect to the live presentation. Your audience members from all over the world can scan the QR code using their mobile phones as companion devices to connect to the live presentation. After joining the presentation, they can choose subtitles in over 60 different languages, which help them to follow-along in their preferred language.
If anyone joins the presentation late, they will see the captions and already captured transcript along the previous slides. Everyone using Live Presentations can also navigate through the deck on their own, allowing them to spend more time on a slide if they missed something. Anyone in the audience can easily express themselves in real-time using Live Reactions, which helps not only to make sure that everyone is included in the presentation, but also provides very valuable information to the presenter on how the presentation is being received. At the end of the presentation, every audience member is prompted to rate the presentation and provide their anonymous feedback to the presenter. Afterwards, the presenter will receive an email with aggregated feedback including comments, which can help them improve future presentations.
Microsoft has released the monthly Office Insider build for Windows users in the Current Channel (Preview). This channel was renamed from Monthly Channel (Targeted) back in June, which was initially known as the Slow Ring. This month’s update bumps the version to 2007 and adds a few new features to Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Some features have been in testing in the Beta channel.
One of the improvements for Office apps across the board is the ability to insert High-Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) pictures from an iPhone. Apple added the ability for the iPhone to capture HEIF images in iOS 11. However, iPhone users have had to convert the images to a JPEG format before inserting them into the Office apps. It must be noted that users must have the HEIF Image Extensions installed. You can head to the Microsoft Store here to install the extension.
ADVERTISING
Excel is receiving the Sheet View feature that has been available for Beta Channel users. It was recently also released to macOS users in the Slow ring. Sheet view lets users create a personalized brief look to manipulate data using filters when collaborating with more users. Excel is also receiving the LET function that gives users group repetitive calculations in a formula for easier readability and improved performance.
Sheet view
Other improvements to Excel include creating PivotTables from Power BI data sets and performance improvements to the SUMIFS and its related aggregate functions. The functions now create internal cached indexes that can be reused when the same ranges are being used, resulting in faster calculations.
PowerPoint is getting improvements to Microsoft Stream video playback. A stream is the company’s enterprise video management tool. The service was integrated into PowerPoint a few months ago. Today’s improvements bring faster playback for Stream videos in the presentation tool.
Creating Outlook polls
Lastly, Outlook is getting a few new features as part of the July updates. You can now quickly create pools in emails by directly inserting a poll from the Insert button (pictured above). This build also brings the ability to automatically restore open items from a previous session if they have been inadvertently closed. Other improvements include the ability to disable @ mentions from the settings and cloud-based backup of settings and signatures when setting up a new device.
Dictation is now available in Word for Mac. This feature enables you to save time and stay in flow by using speech-to-text to quickly get your thoughts into your document.
Prerequisites
In order to use the Dictate feature, you need:
A microphone-enabled device or an external microphone
Insider build 16.32 (19120802) or later installed
To be logged into an account associated with an Office 365 subscription
A stable internet connection
For best results, use a headset or microphone recommended for dictating. Also try eliminating background noise from your environment.
Configuration
Make sure your microphone-enabled device is on and confirm that the language is set to the one you’d like to dictate by clicking the down arrow on the Dictate button. We currently do not auto-detect the language you’re speaking.
If you have problems with your microphone-enabled device, check the sound input settings in System Preferences or dictation troubleshooting instructions.
Start Dictation
1. To turn on Dictation, click Home > Dictate.
2. Click on the Dictate button and wait for the red dot to appear.
3. Start talking and notice that the spoken text appears on your screen. If you see a mistake, simply move your cursor to fix it and move it back to continue dictating. You do not need to toggle off the Dictate button while making corrections.
4. When you’re done, click the Dictate button.
Tips & Tricks
When dictating:
Speak clearly and conversationally, but feel free to pause in between thoughts.
Add punctuation by saying the name of the punctuation mark you want to add out loud.
Period
Comma
Question mark
Exclamation point/mark
New line
Semicolon
Colon
Open quote(s)
Close quote(s)
To turn the microphone on without having to always go to the Home tab, you can add the microphone button to your Quick Access Toolbar.
This feature is powered by the Microsoft Azure Speech Services and built-in directly to Word.
Microsoft launched today a new service that provides Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) customers a straightforward way of communicating with its real-world threat analysts during a security incident. The Experts on Demand feature is now available to everyone as part of the Microsoft Threat Experts threat hunting service.
The Microsoft Threat Experts offering was unveiled in February of this year as a Microsoft 365 feature. That service was meant to detect threats and help customers ask for advice from a threat expert through a button in Windows Defender ATP. With the new feature, security departments within an organization can consult a threat analyst when they receive alerts about acute attacks such as a dangerous kernel device,
The new feature can be accessed from the Microsoft Defender Security Center app in the Actions drop-down menu. Through this service, Microsoft’s security analysts can provide security operations teams with guidance and insights to “understand, prevent, and respond to complex threats in their environments.” The targeted attack notifications feature, another Microsoft Threat Experts capability, is designed to notify organizations about critical threats against their networks on time. This notification includes information on the timeline, the scope of a breach, and the methods of intrusion. Dustin Duran, Principal Group Manager at Microsoft Defender ATP Research, described in a blog post how the new ATP endpoint protection capabilities helped one of its customers spot a malicious file in a single machine and found indications of a new campaign from an advanced adversary that targeted it. Then, the organization’s security team consulted with Microsoft Threat Experts, which, in turn, validated the security team’s findings. Finally, it was found that the “initial malware infection was the result of weak security control,” which granted users unrestricted administrator privilege.
Earlier this year at its Build 2019 developer conference, Microsoft announced IE Mode for its upcoming Chromium-based version of Edge. Now, you can finally use it.
The feature allows you to open a webpage in an Internet Explorer tab within the Edge browser itself. You’ll need to enable a flag called ‘Enable IE Integration’ first, and then when you have a page open, you can go to More tools -> Show this page using Internet Explorer to change the tab you’re in.
Start writing or type / to choose a block
It’s worth noting that the flag was actually discovered a few weeks ago, but enabling it at the time would only launch IE as a separate application. Now, there’s a new option in the dropdown list, so you can choose between Default, Disabled, IE Mode, and NeedIE.
IE Mode is already available in the Dev branch; however, you won’t find it in Edge for Mac. This is because Internet Explorer isn’t supported on Macs, so it was deemed unnecessary.
Another new feature added is a flag called ‘Limit media autoplay’, which will block certain sites from autoplaying video. If you want to check out the Edge Insider builds, you can find it here.
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