Annotation not available in Shared screen in 1-1 call

Hi Jenny Tan,

Based on your description, it is likely that your previous experience was conducted within a meeting, which is why the annotation option was available. In Microsoft Teams, the annotation feature is supported in meetings; however, there is currently no official documentation confirming that it is fully supported in 1:1 calls.

If you would like to use this feature, I recommend scheduling or starting a meeting instead of using a direct call. You can refer to the following article for more details: Use annotation while sharing your screen in Microsoft Teams

Additionally, to ensure that annotation is enabled in meeting, please check with your administrator in the Microsoft Teams admin center by following these steps:

1. Go to the Teams admin center: https://admin.teams.microsoft.com
2. Navigate to Meetings > Meeting policies
3. Select the policy assigned to users (usually Global (Org-wide default))
4. Ensure that "Collaborative annotations" is set to Enabled

I hope the information above is helpful. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out.

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Annotation in Microsoft Teams is only available when screen sharing in a meeting, not in all scenarios.

From the documented behavior:

• Annotation is supported when sharing the screen in a Teams meeting. While sharing, the presenter can select Annotate from the presenter toolbar at the top of the screen to open the Microsoft Whiteboard toolset and let participants annotate.
• Annotation works only when screen sharing, not when sharing a single window.

The context does not document annotation support for 1:1 calls in standard Teams screen sharing. It only describes annotation in:

• Meetings (with the Whiteboard-powered annotation toolbar).
• Specialized mixed reality scenarios (Dynamics 365 Remote Assist / Guides) using the Mixed Reality toolbar.

Because of this, there are no documented M365 admin center settings to enable the same annotation toolbar for a regular 1:1 call screen share. The feature as described is tied to meetings.

To use annotation as shown in meetings:

1. Schedule or start a Teams meeting (even if only with one other person).
2. Share the screen (entire desktop, not just a window).
3. Move the cursor to the top of the screen and select Annotate on the presenter toolbar.
4. Use the Whiteboard toolset to annotate.

There are no additional admin-center steps in the provided documentation to extend this to 1:1 calls.

References:

• Use annotation while sharing your screen in Microsoft Teams