Skype 'how to' guide: group calls and screen sharing

Skype is one of those essential tools that many people (including myself) use on a daily basis to make their working (and personal lives) so much easier.

For many businesses, especially those with limited budgets (including start-ups) Skype is great as it's broadly completely free of charge to use.

In this brief guide I will be showing how to use two of my favourite features (often overlooked) to really help you 'Skype up your life'...

How to make group calls

The 'group calls' function on Skype is really useful if you want to chat simultaneously with several people at once.

And in the case of group calls you can in fact have up to 9 people on at one time. This is obviously really useful if you are having to speak to people in several different locations across the globe.

This video shows you which buttons to press to make the magic happen...

How to share your screen

Ever wanted to show people what you're talking about when you're Skyping them? Well you can!

Skype has a handy little feature that means on a video call you can select to show your screen to the other person (or persons).

You can even select which monitor to show (if you're like me and have three on your desk). One word of warning: if it's an important business presentation then check what is on your other screens BEFORE you start sharing!

This video shows how to get the feature working - just a few clicks and you're live...

I know that many of my colleagues were unaware that these features were even in existence (or that they were free as I think Microsoft used to make them for paid subscribers only).

Hopefully they will prove useful for you and help to Skype up your life!