Connected Accounts let you display Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel, and Word files in Carousel without copying share links or making documents public. Once you connect a Microsoft account, you can browse the files in that account directly from the bulletin editor, and Carousel keeps your displays in sync as you make changes in Microsoft.
Please Note:
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Due to the following Microsoft limitations, cross-account-type (personal + work/school) and cross-tenant file access is not supported
Cross-Account-Type: Personal Microsoft accounts can only access files owned by or shared from other personal Microsoft accounts
Cross-Tenant: Microsoft 365 Work/School accounts can only access files within the same Azure tenant
What You Can Show
Microsoft PowerPoint — presentations stored in OneDrive or SharePoint. Slides are displayed as a sequence of high-quality captured images.
Microsoft Excel — an entire sheet or a named chart. Note that .xls files are not supported
Microsoft Word — a document for display as a multi-page bulletin.
When you create a bulletin, you pick the file from a searchable list of everything in the connected account — no need to manage per-file sharing or paste links.
Requirements
A Microsoft account — personal or a Microsoft 365 work/school account — that can open the files you want to display.
The files you want to display should be stored in OneDrive or SharePoint within the connected account.
The person connecting the account needs to keep that Microsoft login active. Revoking Carousel's access from your Microsoft account security settings will end the connection until you reconnect.
How it Works
Carousel periodically checks Microsoft for changes. Edits you make in PowerPoint, Excel, or Word show up on your displays automatically.
Excel and Word are always shown as snapshots — captured images that refresh on a schedule. Snapshots are reliable and look consistent across players.
For PowerPoint bulletins, you can choose between snapshots (the default) and live display. Live is only needed when you have animations or transitions in your presentation that you want to play on screen.
For PowerPoint, you control how long each slide stays on screen.
For Excel, you can choose to display an entire sheet or a specific named chart.
Connecting Your Account
Please Note: You can connect multiple Microsoft accounts (for example, a personal Outlook account and a Microsoft 365 work account). When editing a bulletin, you choose which connected account to pull from.
Go to User Settings > My Connected Accounts > Add Account
From the drop-down list, choose Microsoft, name the account in Carousel as needed, and then click Connect
A Microsoft sign-in window opens. Sign in and approve the permissions Carousel requests — Carousel needs read access to your files in OneDrive and SharePoint in order to display them.
The account appears in your list, ready to use in any PowerPoint, Excel, or Word bulletin
Re-authenticating
In rare cases, Carousel may lose access to your Microsoft account — typically because access was revoked, conditional-access policies tightened, or the refresh token was invalidated.
When this happens, you can fix the connection from either of two places:
From the bulletin editor. Bulletins using the account will show an error: "This connected account has an error and needs to be re-connected." A Re-Connect Here button appears next to the account — click it, sign in to Microsoft again, and the bulletin returns to normal. Your file selection and bulletin settings are preserved through the reconnect — you don't have to rebuild anything. (If the file you previously chose is no longer accessible to the reconnected account, you'll be prompted to pick a new one.)
From Settings > My Connected Accounts. The account will be flagged with an error. Open the account from that list and use the edit option to sign in to Microsoft again.
When the Account Owner is Removed from Carousel
A Connected Account is owned by the Carousel user who created it. If that user is later removed from your Carousel site, their Connected Accounts are removed as well.
Any bulletin that was using one of those accounts will go into an error state and stop playing — it won't fall back to the last snapshot, and it won't keep running until someone fixes it. To restore the bulletin, another user needs to:
Connect their own Microsoft account under My Connected Accounts (if they don't already have one).
Open the affected bulletin and assign the new connected account to it.
As long as the new account has access to the same file, no further changes are needed — the bulletin picks up where it left off. If the new account can't see the original file, you'll be prompted to choose a different one.
There's no way to "transfer" a Connected Account from a deleted user — each account is tied to the person who set it up. We recommend that the file you display in Carousel be shared with more than one person on your team (or stored in a OneDrive or SharePoint location your team controls), so a colleague can step in and bring the bulletin back online quickly if the original owner leaves.
Additional Information and Troubleshooting
"The previously selected presentation/workbook/document is no longer accessible with this connected account." The file was deleted, moved to a location the connected account can't see, or its sharing was changed. Choose a different file or restore access in Microsoft.
Your account shows an error icon. From inside a bulletin, click Re-Connect Here to sign in again. From My Connected Accounts, edit the account to sign in again.
Edits in Microsoft aren't showing on the player. Carousel checks for updates every 15 minutes, not instantly. If the change still doesn't appear after that, confirm the file is still in the connected account and that the account isn't in an error state.
File moved to trash in Microsoft: If you simply move a file to the trash in Microsoft, your Microsoft bulletin will still continue to play on your Carousel Cloud players. If you fully delete the file from your trash in Microsoft, the bulletin will stop displaying on your Carousel Cloud players.