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Annotation—powered by Microsoft Whiteboard—helps you collaborate on things like a design or presentation while sharing your screen in a Teams meeting.

Turn on and use annotation

While you're sharing your screen in a meeting:

  1. Bring your cursor to the top of the screen you're sharing.

  2. From the presenter toolbar, select Annotate Microsoft Teams annotation icon.

    Annotate icon to select from the Teams meeting controls.

  • All participants will see the Microsoft Whiteboard toolset at the top of the shared screen. Everyone in the meeting can begin annotating right away.

    Dropdown menu from Annotate tool in Teams meetings.

  • Select one of the tools in the Whiteboard toolset—like Sticky notes—and start typing or drawing on the screen. 

    Start annotating with sticky notes and markers in a Teams meeting.

Tip: You can only annotate while screen sharing, not while window sharing.  

Interact with background content

While you're annotating your content, you can interact with the background content directly if you're the one presenting.

Scroll through the page, advance through slides, and more on the shared screen. 

  • To interact with background content, select Start interacting with the background  Take control button on your Whiteboard toolset.

  • To return to annotating, select Stop interacting with the background  Take control button on your Whiteboard toolset.

Take a snapshot

Want to look back at the annotations from your Whiteboard session later? Take a snapshot to automatically save the annotations to a Whiteboard file.

To take an annotation snapshot, select Save a snapshot  Icon used on button to open the camera in Journal on your Whiteboard toolset.

To access your Whiteboard files:

  1. Select View more apps  Microsoft Teams more options icon on the leftmost side of Teams.

  2. Search and select Whiteboard.

  3. Select Annotations  Microsoft Teams annotation icon to see all annotation snapshots.

In the snapshot, you'll be able to see the annotations over the screen that was being shared when the snapshot was taken. 

Select annotations to make changes to them. Resize and move them, duplicate them, and more. 

Annotation settings

Collaborative cursors

Collaborative cursors show the names of every participant in the meeting by default.

Collaborative cursors make it easy to track changes to a whiteboard during a Teams meeting.

Anyone in the meeting can turn them off. To turn them off: 

  1. Select Settings menu  Settings gear icon from the Whiteboard toolset.

  2. Turn off the Collaborative cursors toggle. 

Who can annotate

As presenter, you can choose to be the only one who can annotate your shared content, or you can let all participants annotate.

To choose who can annotate:

  1. Select Settings menu  Settings gear icon from the Whiteboard toolset.

  2. Select Everyone can annotate  Fluent 2 edit icon small or Only I can annotate  Preview form or quiz eye icon.

Turn off annotation

As the presenter, you can turn off annotation for all participants by selecting Annotate  Microsoft Teams annotation icon again from the presenter toolbar.

Related topics

Overview of meetings in Teams

Share content in a meeting

Whiteboard in a Teams meeting

As a meeting participant, you can annotate from mobile if the presenter is sharing from their desktop. 

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