Annoteer

Guide · Review meetings

Collaborative document review in Microsoft Teams

A lot of meetings are really about one document: a specification, a contract, a deck, a budget. Here is how to run that kind of meeting so the review happens on the document, with everyone able to point at the same thing at once.

Why screen-share reviews drag

  • One cursor. Everyone else describes where they mean, and waits for the person sharing to find it.
  • Spoken feedback. Precise changes turn into approximate sentences that somebody has to write down.
  • Notes in a second place. Decisions are retyped into minutes that drift from the file they were about.

A review meeting that works

Before the meeting

  • Agree which file is under review, and its version. A review of the wrong revision wastes everyone’s hour.
  • Say what kind of feedback you want: corrections, decisions, or open questions. It shapes what people mark.

During the meeting

  • Open the document once, for everyone, rather than sharing a screen. With Annoteer, add it from the meeting’s Apps button and choose the file.
  • Let people mark it up in parallel. A highlight or a sticky note on the exact line says more than a minute of description.
  • Use Present when you need the room on one page; let people read ahead when you don’t.
  • Settle each mark as you go: agreed, rejected, or an action with an owner.

After the meeting

  • Send the marked-up document, not a summary of it. PDFs, decks and images download with the annotations burned in; Word and Excel files download with the edits made during the meeting.
  • If a PDF or deck holds figures or a table that belongs in a tracker or spreadsheet, use Extract to pull it out as CSV, JSON or Markdown.

What each format supports

  • PDF — annotate every page; select text to highlight it; download an annotated PDF.
  • PowerPoint — annotate each slide; download the deck as an annotated PDF.
  • Word — edit the document together, live, and download it as a .docx, tables and images included.
  • Excel — edit cells together with formulas and formatting, and download the .xlsx.
  • Images — PNG, JPG, SVG, WebP or GIF, annotated as a single page.
Who can join in. Everyone in the meeting signs in with the Microsoft work account they already use for Teams — there is no separate account to create. Participants on Teams mobile can annotate; opening files and downloading need desktop or the web. Guests using Microsoft’s anonymous meeting link cannot load meeting apps.

Try it on your next review

Every organisation starts with a 14-day trial with no credit card. Add Annoteer from Microsoft Marketplace, then open it from the Apps button in your next Teams meeting.

Get it from Microsoft Marketplace Book a 15-minute walkthrough

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