The Office Presentation Service enables presenters to broadcast Live PowerPoint slides via the Internet. The same service can also be used to present Word documents online during live presentations.
Broadcast Your Word Document via the Internet
Before you present your Word documents online, make sure your document is ready and requires no further changes to avoid interruptions during your Live session. To start broadcasting the Word document online, go to File -> Share -> Present Online. You can also enable the option to allow viewers to download the file.
Your document will be broadcasted online via the Office Presentation Service after taking a few seconds to connect online. Make sure you have a functional internet connection when attempting to broadcast your document.
Share Broadcast Link & Start Presentation
You will be provided with a link to share with your audience. This link can be used by anyone to view and download your document. As mentioned earlier, for the latter, you will have to enable download for the file before going online. You can send this link to participants via email, IM, place it on your website or show it in the hall for participants to join the Live session. Since the generated URL is quite lengthy, you might want to create a short version of it using a URL shortener like TinyURL. Alternatively, you can send the link via instant message or email, so that participants can click and join the session instead of typing a long link. Once you’re ready to present, click Start Presentation.
Once you start broadcasting your presentation online your audience will be able to follow your presentation via the shared link. During the presentation you can share meeting notes using OneNote, send invitations using the invite option, pause the presentation to edit it and end the presentation once the session is complete via the End Online Presentation option.
Enable Your Audience to View the Broadcast from an Internet Browser
The below image shows a desktop browser used for viewing the Live broadcast of the Word document. Your audience can print and download the document (if enabled), as well as use the immersive reader to listen to the document text.
Workaround for Mobile Browser Compatibility Limitation
When using the Office Presentation Service for a Word document, your participants might have trouble viewing the document via mobile browsers. While we did not face any such issue for PowerPoint presentations, during testing of the service, we found mobile browsers to be incompatible for viewing Word documents broadcast via the Office Presentation Service. You can ask your audience to use the Desktop Version of a mobile browser as a workaround. During testing we were unable to use the Android Chrome browser, however, the built-in Android browser played the document perfectly once it was switched to the Desktop Version.
Using the Office Presentation Service you can broadcast your Word documents during remote meetings, webinars and Live presentations to enable your audience to follow and view your Word document via and Internet connected device. For smartphones and tablets your audience will require switching to Desktop Version to play the document. However, some mobile browsers work using this workaround and some don’t. We hope that Microsoft will resolve the browser compatibility limitation for broadcasting Word documents in the near future.
