Do you deliver presentations, demos or training courses via Webex? The team I work for offers a global training service and consequently I use Webex as a delivery mechanism on a regular basis.

Several months ago, whilst helping somebody setup and run a meeting using Webex, I discovered a problem – if the presenter is using Vista (and most of our company is now) and they display the chat panel and/or the participants panel, the other participants will see on their screen, a grey box with a yellow “cross hatched” pattern.

The size and location of this cross-hatched pattern is determined by the size and location of the panels on the presenter’s screen.

This issue only arises when the presenter is sharing their screen and of course, unless a participant shouts “Something’s covering part of the screen and I can’t see the presentation”, they’ll be non the wiser.

I’m lucky in that I have an external monitor. OK, it’s not a super-duper 22-inch one, it’s an old 17-inch one that I’ve had for a few years. But nevertheless, when I’m in the office, I have it permanently connected to my Vista laptop.

When I’m running a training course or delivering a presentation via Webex, I share my laptop screen and drag the participants panel and chat panel over to the external monitor so that I can have these permanently displayed. This allows me to monitor the chat and see who is attending/dropping out of the meeting without spoiling the attendees view of the presentation.

On another note, does anyone know if it is possible to set Webex to share an external monitor? If I select Share Desktop, it will only share the primary laptop monitor. If I select Share an Application, and the application is on the external monitor, other participants can’t see it.

Reproduced from mthomas.co.uk/webex-and-multiple-monitors/