Install the DirectPoll add-in, and what is specific to Windows once it runs.
Building the deck is platform-independent – result links, the DirectPoll rectangle and its Alt Text work the same everywhere, and are covered in detail in Embed your Poll into a PowerPoint Presentation. This page adds what is specific to Windows; for the Mac, see PowerPoint on macOS.
On Windows, DirectPoll is an add-in that installs into PowerPoint. It installs under your user profile – no admin rights needed, and PowerPoint can stay open while it installs.
Updating is the one case that needs PowerPoint closed, because it replaces files PowerPoint has open. Start the installer anyway: it waits, and carries on in the background the moment you close PowerPoint – there is nothing to run a second time. Uninstalling needs nothing closed.
There is nothing to start and no permissions to grant. The add-in adds a DirectPoll group to PowerPoint's Slide Show tab, and otherwise stays out of the way until a deck with DirectPoll shapes is open.
One thing on Windows: a deck it is allowed to run in.
PowerPoint opens files from the internet in Protected View, where add-ins can't run – including the deck you just downloaded from your poll, and any deck a colleague mailed you. Click Enable Editing in the yellow bar once; PowerPoint remembers it for that file.
This is the single most common reason for "nothing appears on my slides" on Windows.
DirectPoll checks regularly and downloads nothing on its own – see Keep it up to date for what that means. On Windows, here is where it shows up.
Two places, so you notice whether or not you have a deck open:
DirectPoll shapes is open, a short notice sits in the top right corner of your slides, with a View link straight to the card. It is only in the editor – it never appears in a slide show – and you can close it.Both lead to the same place: click Status in the DirectPoll group on the Slide Show tab. The card shows the version and the size, with Download and install underneath; while it runs, the card is where the progress appears, and Cancel the download stops it with nothing installed.
The next time you close PowerPoint. The update replaces files PowerPoint has open, so it waits rather than pulling them out from under a deck you are working on – you keep running the version you started with until you quit, and the next start is the new one. There is nothing to confirm and nothing to click: closing PowerPoint is all it needs.
With the add-in installed, DirectPoll marks up your deck while you work on it in Normal view: each DirectPoll rectangle gets a blue outline and a small label saying what that marker will do when you present – or what is wrong with its link.
A label reads like DirectPoll · Question 2 · reveal – the wording is the same on both platforms, with the DirectPoll in front because a label sitting on a slide has nothing else to say whose marker it is.
A marker that cannot work is outlined in red instead of blue, and gets a second label under the first saying what to do about it – "Paste the poll's presentation link there", and so on. Which problems get flagged is the same on both platforms; the remedy note is a Windows detail.
The deck itself is never changed by this! Your .pptx stays a plain PowerPoint file that opens correctly on any machine, with or without DirectPoll installed.
Everything you can switch is in one place: the DirectPoll group on PowerPoint's Slide Show tab. It is there whenever PowerPoint is, whatever deck you have open.
Both checkboxes are on by default, and PowerPoint remembers them, so you set them once.
The DirectPoll panel described in While you present is drawn inside PowerPoint's Presenter View on Windows. So it appears only when you present with Presenter View on – a second screen, with Use Presenter View ticked on the Slide Show tab. Present without it and there is no panel; nothing else about the show changes.
Drag it by its header to put it wherever suits you in the presenter window – it stays clear of PowerPoint's own notes and thumbnails – and it comes back in the same spot the next time you present.
To switch it off, clear Show Presenter panel. The panel's ✕ and that checkbox are one switch: closing the panel with the ✕ unticks the box, and ticking it brings the panel straight back, mid-show included.
These come on top of the general limitations:
Building the deck has none of these limits: a .pptx with DirectPoll shapes is a plain presentation and can be authored anywhere, including on the web – it is only presenting that needs the add-in.
See the general troubleshooting first – theme, &action, reveal and marker placement are platform-independent. Windows-specific checks:
DirectPoll – capitalization is free, but a trailing space or anything appended (DirectPoll 2) is a different name. Check it in the Selection Pane, which shows the real name rather than the one you think you typed. Catching it here is the whole point: the alternative is finding out in front of an audience.