PowerPoint in the Background on Zoom

During the hopefully soon to end COVID pandemic, folks have done an awful lot of tinkering around with Zoom backgrounds for the sake of humor, or to hide messy living rooms. Don’t miss that an advanced share screen setting will allow you to have an active Powerpoint presentation displayed in the background, while your webcam image is still shown to an audience.

Click on the Share Screen button at the bottom of the screen in a Zoom session. Then click on the Advanced tab in the dialog box which opens, and select, 'PowerPoint as Virtual Background'.

Your Zoom image will appear in front of the slides at the lower right. This feature will work even if you don't have PowerPoint installed on your PC. Your webcam image can be moved and resized simply by clicking on it, and dragging at the corners. Zoom will capture your hand gestures in this mode, but it's very difficult to get them right.

A small box with controls to move slides forward and backward should appear when your cursor is moved across the screen.

Click 'Stop Share' at the top of the screen to exit this background mode.