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How to Do Breakout Rooms in Zoom: Step-by-Step Guide with Photos

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How to Do Breakout Rooms in Zoom: Step-by-Step Guide with Photos

Have you ever curated a Zoom meeting only to find that your participants need to split into groups? Perhaps you’re training new employees or teaching eager students new skills. Among its many features, Zoom offers breakout rooms.

These rooms stem from one meeting and allow administrators to send participants to their own private conference rooms. What’s even better is you don’t need a paid Zoom subscription to create breakout rooms. You just need to enable the feature in Zoom’s settings, then start a meeting!

If that sounds like a lot of work, don’t worry. We’re going to walk you through the entire process below. So, let’s learn how to do breakout rooms in Zoom!

How to Enable Breakout Rooms

As stated above, we need to enable the breakout room feature on Zoom before we can use it. Rather than opening the Zoom app on your mobile device or computer, it’s best to tweak Zoom’s settings on a web browser.

So, follow the steps below to enable breakout rooms on Zoom.

Step 1: Visit Your Account Page on a Browser

Visit this link and sign into your Zoom account.

zoom breakout rooms
First, sign into Zoom.

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Step 2: Click Account Management

Then, click Account Settings.

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Click on Account Management.

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Step 3: Toggle the Breakout Rooms Switch

Make sure you’re on the Meeting tab at the top. Then, toggle the switch to the right of Breakout Rooms, so it turns on.

Helpful hint: There are a lot of options on this page. Use ctrl+f or cmd+f and type breakout to locate the option quickly.

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Toggle the switch for Breakout room, and it’ll turn blue.

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Step 4: Check the Boxes

Finally, check the boxes to enable breakout rooms in Zoom.

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Enable the choices you want.

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How to Do Breakout Rooms in Zoom on Mac and PC

Now that we’ve enabled breakout rooms in Zoom’s settings, it’s time to start a meeting and take advantage of the feature. Follow the next eight steps to set up breakout rooms in your next meeting.

Helpful hint: Only the meeting administrators can enable and customize breakout rooms.

Step 1: Start a Meeting

To create breakout rooms, we need to start a Zoom meeting first. Open Zoom on your Mac or PC and sign into your account.

You can use the web browser or the desktop app. Invite any attendees you’d like, and click the Start Meeting option.

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Click New Meeting to create a new one.

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Step 2: Click the Menu Icon

At the bottom of your Zoom screen, you’ll notice many icons. To the far right is a three-dot icon that says More. Click that option.

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Click the three dots that say More under.

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Step 3: Start Breakout Rooms

Now you’ll see a pop-up window. Locate and click on Breakout Rooms.

Helpful hint: You’ll only see this option if there is more than one participant.

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Click on Breakout Rooms.

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Step 4: Select the Number of Breakout Rooms

A new pop-up window will appear. Use the arrow-up icons to set the number of breakout rooms you need.

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Select how many breakout rooms you want.

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Step 5: Click Create

At the bottom of the pop-up window, select Create.

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Click Create.

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Step 6: Assign Members

Click Assign Manually to choose which participants belong in each breakout room. Then, click Assign next to each room. Finally, tap the boxes to the left of each person’s name.

If you want Zoom to assign the participants to rooms for you, leave the option checked for Zoom to automatically assign participants to breakout rooms.

Or you can let your participants choose which room they’d like to join by clicking the third option, Let Participants choose room.

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Assign the rooms.

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Step 7: Click Open All Rooms

Finally, click the Open All Rooms option to send the appropriate recipients to their rooms.

The change takes effect automatically, and the respective team members will join their assigned Zoom breakout room.

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Click Open All Rooms to send the participants off.

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Check out this informative video tutorial that guides you through the step-by-step process of creating and managing breakout rooms. From team discussions to interactive workshops, you’ll learn how to make your virtual meetings more engaging and organized. Watch the video now to become a Breakout Room pro!

How to Join Breakout Rooms

Maybe you want to ensure everyone is following directions, or you want to participate too. Nonetheless, you should know how to join breakout rooms.

If you want to drop in on your participants in their respective breakout rooms, follow these steps.

Step 1: Click the Menu Icon

After starting your meeting and creating breakout rooms, click the three-dot More icon at the bottom of the screen.

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Click the three dots that say More.

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Step 2: Click Breakout Rooms

A new menu will appear where you can click Breakout Rooms. Select that option.

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Click Breakout Rooms.

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Step 3: Click Join

Click Join next to the room you want to join. Then, repeat these steps as needed.

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Click Join.

How to Close Breakout Rooms

When a long day’s work is complete, and you’re ready to send everyone back to the main meeting, you’ll need to close the breakout rooms. Fortunately, you can do that with a few mouse clicks.

Helpful hint: A notification will pop up for your participants letting them know the breakout room is closing. After sixty seconds, they’ll automatically go back to the main meeting.

Step 1: Click the Menu Icon

Click the three-dot icon that says More under it.

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Click the three dots that say More under.

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Step 3: Click Breakout Rooms

Select Breakout Rooms from the menu that appears.

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Click Breakout Rooms.

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Step 3: Click Close All Rooms

Finally, click Close All Rooms and wait for your team to come back to the anchor meeting.

Now, you can debrief or say goodbye to all the participants and end the meeting.

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Click Close All Rooms.

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How to Communicate With Everyone in Breakout Rooms

Perhaps your meeting is coming to an end, and you’d like to give everyone a five-minute timer to wrap things up. Or, you just want to broadcast a message. Fortunately, you can send mass communication to all the breakout rooms using the Broadcast feature.

Here’s what to do.

Step 1: Click the More Icon

Start out by clicking the Menu icon in the lower right corner.

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Click More.

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Step 2: Click Breakout Rooms

Click Breakout Rooms in the pop-up menu.

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Click Breakout Rooms.

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Step 3: Click Broadcast

Click Broadcast at the bottom of the Breakout Room page.

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Click Broadcast.

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Step 4: Click Broadcast Message or Voice

Choose the option that best suits your needs.

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Broadcast a message or your voice.

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Step 5: Create Your Broadcast

Finally, you can type a message or speak to everyone in their breakout rooms.

If you chose to type a message, just click the paper airplane icon in the lower left.

If you chose to send a voice message, click the Record icon and speak your message.

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Send or record your message.

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Breakout on Your Zoom

Zoom’s breakout rooms are yet another useful tool in the software’s box of goodies. You can assign members to work on group projects, give presentations, or have a bit of water cooler talk while you complete important tasks.

It only takes a few mouse clicks to set up breakout rooms, assign participants, and drop in on the mini-meetings. If you follow our tutorial above, you’ll have no problem getting everyone situated.

How to Do Breakout Rooms in Zoom: Step-by-Step Guide with Photos FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) 

Do I have to pay for Zoom to host breakout rooms?

No. While some limitations exist for free subscribers, Zoom’s breakout rooms and their features are free and available for everyone.

How many breakout rooms can I do?

You can have up to 50 breakout rooms per meeting. Or, you can have as little as one breakout room if a select few need a little timeout.

Can I make everyone start in breakout rooms?

Yes. You’ll need to enable the option in the settings (see the first section of this tutorial). Then, you can pre-assign your attendees to the appropriate rooms before starting the meeting.

How do I get rid of a breakout room that I don't need?

If you added too many breakout rooms, you could easily delete one by going to the Menu > Breakout Rooms page and selecting Delete.

How many participants can be in each breakout room?

Standard users get 200 participants per breakout room.

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