Mentimeter from join code to quiz slide: what happens at each step
Mentimeter puts live slides in front of an audience that joins from its own devices with a participation link, a QR code or a temporary join code. Presenters can run those slides inside PowerPoint through an add-in, build quiz slides with a defined correct answer, and share a question in Zoom. Whether a result counts in a contest is the organiser's decision, not the tool's.
Written by BuyPollVotes editorial desk | Last checked
The three ways an audience gets into a Menti
Mentimeter lists three ways for an audience to connect to a Menti and take part in a live poll or quiz: a participation link, a QR code, or a join code typed in on the join page of its website. All three open the same Menti, so the choice is practical: scanning for people facing a screen with phones in hand, a link for a chat message or an email, typed digits for a room where reading them off the slide beats scanning.
Mentimeter's main how-to page calls the join code the voting code and lists the same three routes: entering the voting code, scanning the presentation's QR code, or following the voting link. The two names point at one thing.
A login is not one of the three ways on that list. The participant's part is to follow a link, scan the slide or type digits into a text field on their own device.
A join code is numeric, temporary and tied to Live
A Mentimeter join code is a temporary numeric code, generated automatically when a presenter creates a Menti Live. Join codes are only available for Menti Live, so the choice made at the start of a session decides whether a code exists at all.
The code does not last forever. The vendor says it is only temporary and renews if the presentation is left idle for 48 hours, so digits jotted down for a session that then sat untouched for two days is worth checking against the slide before it is handed out again.
The code shows on the slide itself, below the QR code or in the bottom right corner. A Mentimeter QR code can sit on the right side of the slide, or the presenter can show only the numeric code for participants to type in on the join page. Either way, the participant's part is a text field and a number.
Quiz slides: two types and one required answer
Select Answer slides work like multiple choice questions: participants pick one option from the answers the presenter provides. Type Answer slides are free text questions: participants write the answer themselves. What separates the two is who supplies the wording, the presenter for one and the participant for the other.
Neither type works as a quiz until a correct answer exists. After entering the question title and the answer options, the presenter has to select or define a correct answer, and on a Type Answer slide it goes into the text field under Correct Answer. The correct answer is the presenter's definition of right, and nothing else decides it.
For a contest that ranks entrants by quiz score, the organiser's own rules still decide what counts: who can take part, whether a retry is allowed, and what happens to a score the organiser judges to be fake.
Matching the way in to the room
Each way in fits a different room, and a slide can show the QR code and the join code side by side, so the pairing is a matter of who is where.
- People watching a shared screen can scan the QR code or type the digits shown on the slide.
- People who are not in the room need the participation link, sent by message or email.
- People in a Zoom meeting can answer in the shared view once the presenter shares the question through the app.
What a code, a QR scan or a link cannot vouch for
A code shown on a slide admits whoever can read the slide, and a link admits whoever receives it. Those are properties of a code and a link, whatever tool issues them, and they explain why a route into a session says nothing about the person who used it.
What a Mentimeter result records is what devices entered while the session was open. It does not record who deserved to count. That decision belongs to the organiser under the contest's own rules: the organiser can set responses aside, and can disqualify an entry that gained them, whatever the slide shows.
A response that looks fake is judged by the organiser, from the results in front of them and the rules the contest published, and no join method changes that judgement. A quiz makes the point sharply: the presenter defines the correct answer, so the presenter decides what counts as right.
Contest rules that forbid paid or automated responses are the organiser's to enforce, and a session offers no way to argue with that. Organisers also write their own policy on how many times one person can respond and on when a session opens and closes.
| Way in | Participant action | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Participation link | Follows the link | Also called the voting link |
| QR code | Scans it from the slide | Can sit on the right side |
| Join code | Types the numeric code | Menti Live only; renews after 48 hours idle |
How to do it
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Start a Menti Live from the Dashboard
On your Dashboard, click the New Menti + button and select Live. Choosing Live matters for joining: a temporary numeric join code is generated automatically when a Menti Live is created, and only a Menti Live has one.
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Add a slide with the New slide button
Click New slide on the left-hand side. For a quiz, choose either the Select Answer slide type or the Type Answer slide type.
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Enter the question and define the correct answer
Type the question title and, on a Select Answer slide, the answer options. Then select or define a correct answer. On a Type Answer slide, the correct answer goes in the text field under Correct Answer.
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Show the QR code and join code on the slide
A QR code can sit on the right side of the slide, and the temporary join code appears below it or in the bottom right corner. The participation link is the third way in.
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Start the presentation when the room is ready
Click Start presentation when you are ready to host, which is how Mentimeter describes starting a Quiz Competition. Participants then answer on their own devices.
Common questions
How do people join a Mentimeter presentation?
People join a Menti in one of three ways: a participation link, a QR code scan, or the temporary join code typed into a text field on the join page. It appears below the QR code or in the bottom right corner of the slide, and it exists only for a Menti Live.
How do you use Mentimeter in PowerPoint?
Through the add-in: on the Home tab of PowerPoint, Add-ins sits at the far right of the ribbon and lists Mentimeter. Pick a Menti slide, click Add, and it lands on the current PowerPoint slide; Add Menti slides in the menu brings in more.
Can you integrate Mentimeter into PowerPoint Online or Teams?
The add-in integrates Mentimeter with PowerPoint, but it does not currently work in PowerPoint Online, the web version, or in PowerPoint Live inside Microsoft Teams. The vendor says the add-in is available with all plan types, so the limit is the PowerPoint environment, not the plan.
How do you set up a Mentimeter quiz?
Start a Menti Live from the Dashboard, add a slide with the New slide button, and choose Select Answer or Type Answer. Then enter the question title and answer options and select or define a correct answer before presenting. Click Start presentation when you are ready to host the Quiz Competition.
Does Mentimeter have an app?
Mentimeter offers an app for Zoom, which lets a presenter share a Menti question inside Zoom without screen sharing. Participants vote in the shared Zoom view, where the voting view shows up automatically. Joining a Menti outside Zoom uses the participation link, the QR code or the join code.
Why is Mentimeter used?
Presenters use Mentimeter to put a live question or quiz on a slide and collect answers from an audience that joins on its own devices. The audience joins with a participation link, a QR code or a join code, then either picks one option or types an answer, depending on the slide type.
Where these facts come from
- lse.atlassian.net. lse.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/Mentimeter/pages/2547875864/Using+the+PowerPoint+Add-in.
- help.mentimeter.com. help.mentimeter.com/en/articles/410463-how-to-create-a-quiz-competition.
- help.mentimeter.com. help.mentimeter.com/en/articles/410537-how-to-participate-in-a-menti.
- help.mentimeter.com. help.mentimeter.com/en/articles/2780681-how-long-is-my-join-code-valid.
- help.mentimeter.com. help.mentimeter.com/en/articles/5228027-mentimeter-app-for-zoom.
Plan levels, any free allowance and the number of participants a plan admits are plan details, and no figure for them is given here. Nothing here settles how an organiser treats a Mentimeter result: the organiser reads the results against the contest's own rules, and a win is never something a service decides.
X prohibits coordinating with or compensating others to inflate engagement metrics, and it names Polls among the features covered. The Pet Industry Business Awards name the consequence in their own contest: a business may be investigated, lose votes or be disqualified on reasonable evidence of purchased votes. No seller can stop an organiser from doing that.
Slido says it is alerted when an event gets an unusually high number of votes in a very short time, and Crowdsignal says its built-in measures detect patterns of potentially abusive voting. Ordinary participation arrives spread across the voting window, from different people at different moments. Nothing on this site is a method for getting a vote past a check, and a vote that a tool blocks does not count.
Organiser rules differ: the RSPCA Pet of the Year Awards allow extra votes through donations on their official mechanism, while OpenTable Australia treats a vote cast in exchange for money or a reward as null and void. Both are contest rules, not statutes, and whether payment is lawful where you live is a question for a lawyer. Orders are refused for any contest whose rules ban paid votes, and for political ballots.
Votes ordered for a poll that never appear on its count are refunded after the poll closes. A refund never covers an organiser's decision: Localsearch may void all votes for a disqualified nominee, and Mentimeter says a user whose access it cancels under its Acceptable Use Policy is owed no refund or compensation. No result is promised.