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Highlight, Draw and Guide: Annotation Comes to Microsoft Teams

02 December, 2025

Wait, You Can Annotate in Microsoft Teams Now?

If you ever appreciated how easy it was to annotate on shared screens in Zoom and wished you could do the same thing in Microsoft Teams, good news, you can now use annotation directly in Teams while presenting your screen.

This feature brings a more interactive, visual way to guide colleagues through content, explain processes and highlight important details during meetings, training sessions or walkthroughs.

Where It Helps at KAUST

Annotation is especially useful across our academic and business environments:

  • Teaching and research discussions: Presenters can highlight diagrams, datasets or workflows to make explanations clearer.
  • Administrative and operational walkthroughs: Teams can point out steps or areas of interest during live system demos.
  • Project and process reviews: Groups can mark up slides or dashboards in real time to support quick decisions.

Important before you start

  • Only the presenter can enable annotation. Participants will not see the tools unless the presenter turns them on.
  • Annotation only works when sharing your entire screen. It is not available when sharing a single window or a PowerPoint Live deck.

How to Use Annotation in Microsoft Teams

  1. Begin sharing your screen in Microsoft Teams. Select Screen instead of a specific window so annotation becomes available.
  2. Once your screen is shared, look for the Annotation button on the presenter toolbar at the top.
  3. Click Start annotation to activate the tools.
  4. If you want others to annotate with you, turn on Allow others to annotate.
  5. Use the toolbar to work with:
    • Pen and highlighter tools
    • Shapes and arrows
    • Text box
    • Eraser, undo and redo
  6. When finished, select Stop annotation to continue presenting normally.

Want to Learn More?

For additional details, visit Microsoft’s full guide here:

Use annotation while sharing your screen in Microsoft Teams

The next time you are presenting a process, demonstrating a system or explaining a detailed concept, try enabling annotation while sharing your screen.

It makes discussions clearer, training more engaging and teamwork more effective.