Why can't I "Share My Screen"?

Report · Jul 16, 2012

Friday I was in a trouble-shooting session via Adobe's "chat" trying to get my Captivate app reactivated on a new PC (Windows 7). The Adobe tech support person wanted to see the window I was looking at, so the support person gave me to the link in the chat window to "share screen, " which opened Adobe Connect. After Adobe Connect opened, I clicked "Share My Screen," but it didn't work.

Why would it not work? Might it relate to my company's standard Internet security settings?

Here are my Internet security settings:

Any other ideas?

Thank you!

Jan

Report · Jul 17, 2012

Out of curiosity, did you also get kicked out of the room once you tried to share your screen? I'm trying to troubleshoot a similar problem we're having with folks outside of Adobe (I'm internal) connecting to our Connect rooms and getting kicked out when they try to share their screens. Thanks -Matt

Report · Jul 17, 2012

No, Matt, I didn't get kicked out; rather, the Adobe Connect window continued to be displayed -- but it did not share my screen.

-Jan

Report · Jul 18, 2012

Hi,

We were able to fix this with the folks who were having issues outside of our team, per my note above. It turns out they needed to go and manually download the add-on. Although they thought it had added on automatically when they were logged in to the Connect session (as it had in the past), it may not have. So outside of a session, they went to this page and downloaded the add-in: http://www.adobe.com/support/connect/downloads-updates.html . In a follow-on session, the screen sharing now works.

Not sure if this will help, but maybe will...

Thanks,

Matt

Report · Jul 19, 2012

Matt, thank you for the info about possibly downloading the Add-in. I don't have Adobe Connect on this PC (I haven't purchased it), so I'm wondering whether I could download the Add-in. And if I did download the add-in, should I download the Connect 8 Add-In or the Connect 9 Add-in?

Thanks.

-Jan (As you can see, I don't know much about Adobe Connect yet.)

Report · Jul 19, 2012

Hey Jan,

There's no need to purchase Adobe Connect - anyone can download the Adobe Connect add-in. The add-in is actually only required if you need to share your screen (we've never added that functionality to the Flash Player).

You can install the add-in manually, though there is also somethig we call the 'lightning install' process that happens when you try to share your screen without the add-in installed. The lightning install should only take a few seconds and it usually even works for customers in locked-down desktop environments. Once installed, the meeting room would re-open in the add-in.

In your case - it looks like the lightning install failed (or didn't begin). Perhaps IE blocked it, or perhaps there was a yellow bar at the top of your screen that you may not have noticed.

In any case, manually installing the add-in should resolve the issue.

I'd recommend using version 9 of the add-in since it's backwards compatible.

Thanks,

Alistair

Sr. Product Enablement Manager, Adobe Connect