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With Poll Everywhere for MacOS you can insert activities directly into both PowerPoint and Keynote. 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 slide presentation in either PowerPoint or Keynote.
Step 2: Open the Poll Everywhere for MacOS app (if you followed the steps in the install article, it can be found in your Applications folder). The Poll Everywhere icon appears in your doc when the application is running.
Helpful tip: The Poll Everywhere for MacOS app opens in its own window, separate from PowerPoint or Keynote. You will not see a Poll Everywhere tab in your presentation app.
Step 3: If you are not already logged in, the Log in window will appear. Enter your Poll Everywhere account credentials and click Log in.
Step 4: In the Poll Everywhere app window, 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, 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. This placeholder slide is indicated by blue marks in the corners that 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 activities, you can update the images. Click the Poll Everywhere icon in the menu bar, click Sync from the dropdown menu, then select whether you want to sync only the Current slide, or sync All the activity slides in your presentation.
Step 5: Switch to Slide Show/Presentation mode to review your slides.
Keynote: Click the Play button in the toolbar to enter Slide Show/Presentation mode.
PowerPoint: Select the Slide Show tab, then click either Play from Start or Play from Current Slide.
Alternately, you can also click the Play Slide Show button in the bottom right area 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 running, and that you are logged in as the poll 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 Keynote or 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 Keynote or 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.