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With Poll Everywhere for Windows you can insert activities directly into PowerPoint. From simple activities like Multiple choice and Word cloud, to Surveys and even Competitions, a few clicks will get you up and running. You can also create new activities from within the app without having to leave your presentation and log into the website. Follow the steps below to get your presentation deck set up and begin interacting with your audience.
Inserting activities
Step 1: Open a new or existing PowerPoint presentation.
Step 2: Click the Poll Everywhere tab.
Step 3: If you are not yet logged in, click the Log in button. (If you are already logged in, skip to Step 5.)
Step 4: Sign in using your Poll Everywhere credentials. (If you do not yet have a Poll Everywhere account, the Log in window has a tab where you can sign up for a free account.)
Step 5: Click on Insert and then select "Activity" from the dropdown list.
Step 6: Select the activities you want to insert by clicking the checkboxes then tap the Insert button in the bottom right.
Helpful tip: If you want to use the activity flows feature on a multiple choice question, tap the Insert as… button. Check out the Activity flows article for more information about this feature.
After all the activities you selected have been inserted, slides with mockups of your activities appear in the deck. Each activity has its own slide. Blue placeholder marks in the corners of the slide tell the system where to display your activity. (The Survey placeholder looks a bit different and you can find some tips on using surveys further down in this article.)
Helpful tip: The placeholder image is basically a screenshot of your activity at the moment you insert it into the presentation. If you edit your activity, you can update the image. On the Poll Everywhere tab click the Sync button. The placeholder image you are focused on will be updated.
Step 7: Switch to Slide Show/Presentation mode. You can do this three different ways:
- Press the F5 key on your keyboard.
- Select the Start From Beginning command on the Quick Access toolbar.
- Click the Play Slide Show command at the bottom of the PowerPoint window.
Your activities will now load and activate from within your presentation. Whichever question is displayed will be automatically activated and able to receive responses.
More useful tips
Be logged in
Make sure the app is installed and that you are logged into the Poll Everywhere tab on the PowerPoint ribbon as the activity owner.
The importance of notes
The notes section for each activity slide contains the title and a link to your question that needs to stay intact for the activities to function correctly. Do not delete it. You may add information to the notes below the link if needed.
Arranging the presentation
Activity slides can be dragged between slides or into other presentations, just like any normal PowerPoint slide. Resizing the grey placeholder image will indicate where an activity should load on screen.
Tips on using competitions
When inserting a competition into your PowerPoint presentation, the app will insert the competition welcome slide and a slide for each phase of every question (Question, Answers, Responses, and Leaderboard). For example, if you have a four question competition, the app will insert 17 slides: Four for each question and one title slide.
Helpful tip: While you can drag and drop competitions slides to rearrange your questions, it is recommended you do this via the web before inserting them into your presentation. If you must adjust the order in your presentation (e.g. lack the time to adjust them on the web and reinsert the competition), be sure to keep all the phases for each question together and in the same order or things might get really confusing.
Tips on using surveys
The placeholder slide for a survey looks a little different. It still has the blue marks in the corners but the slide itself contains only the survey title and instructions to respond. Otherwise it’s blank.
While presenting a survey, rather than showing responses to individual questions, the slide will update showing audience members progress through the survey.
Please contact us if you run into any issues.