How to Share Your Screen in Microsoft Teams (Ctrl+Shift+E)

Pressing Ctrl+Shift+E on Windows, or Cmd+Shift+E on Mac, opens the screen and window selection picker if you're not currently sharing anything, or stops an active screen share if one is already in progress — a single shortcut handling both directions depending on current state. **What the share picker offers**: Teams presents options to share your entire desktop, a specific individual application window, a PowerPoint file directly (using Teams' built-in PowerPoint Live presentation mode rather than a raw screen share of the presentation software), or a whiteboard — a meaningfully broader set of options than simply mirroring your whole screen, letting you share precisely what's relevant without exposing unrelated open windows or notifications to the meeting. **PowerPoint Live specifically**: choosing to share a PowerPoint file directly, rather than sharing your screen while that file happens to be open in PowerPoint itself, gives other participants their own independent view controls — they can navigate ahead to preview upcoming slides or fall behind to reference an earlier one without disrupting what the presenter themselves is currently displaying, a genuinely different experience from a traditional raw screen share where every viewer sees exactly the same frame as the presenter at all times. **Sharing system audio**: when sharing a full screen or a specific window containing audio (a video, for instance), a separate toggle within the sharing options controls whether that audio is included in the share — screen sharing alone doesn't automatically transmit sound from the shared content unless this option is specifically enabled, which is a common point of confusion for anyone sharing a video clip and wondering why the meeting can't hear it. **Giving control to another participant**: once screen sharing is active, the presenter can grant another participant the ability to control the shared screen directly — moving the mouse and typing as if they were physically at the presenter's own computer — useful for a live troubleshooting session or a collaborative walkthrough where handing off active control is more efficient than talking someone through each step verbally. **Related shortcuts**: Ctrl+Shift+M and Ctrl+Shift+O toggle audio and video independently of screen sharing, and all three can be active simultaneously — sharing a screen doesn't automatically mute your microphone or stop your camera, so it's worth being deliberate about each of these three states separately rather than assuming starting a share changes anything about audio or video. **Mistake to avoid**: sharing your entire desktop by default out of habit, rather than a specific application window, when only one specific document or application actually needs to be visible — a full-desktop share risks exposing notifications, other open documents, or unrelated content that wasn't meant to be seen by the meeting, and choosing the more specific single-window share option instead avoids that risk entirely. **Sharing on the web browser version versus desktop app**: screen sharing through Teams' browser version relies on the browser's own screen-capture permissions rather than a native OS-level capability, which sometimes means an extra browser permission prompt appears before sharing actually begins — the desktop app generally has a smoother, more direct path to the share picker without this extra permission step, since it can access the operating system's screen-capture functionality more directly than a browser tab can. **Presenting versus attendee roles affecting sharing permission**: in a larger, more formally structured meeting, an organizer can restrict who is allowed to share their screen at all, generally limiting that ability to designated presenters rather than every attendee — someone without presenting permission attempting Ctrl+Shift+E in such a meeting finds the share option simply unavailable or grayed out, mirroring the same permission-gating pattern found in Zoom's host-controlled recording and meeting-management features. **Stopping someone else's share as an organizer**: an organizer can forcibly stop another participant's active screen share directly through the participant list if needed, distinct from that presenter voluntarily stopping their own share with Ctrl+Shift+E — useful if a share needs to be interrupted for time management or content-appropriateness reasons during a live meeting. **Related shortcuts**: Ctrl+Shift+M and Ctrl+Shift+O remain fully available and independently controllable throughout an active screen share, letting a presenter freely adjust their own audio and video state without needing to interrupt or stop the share itself first.