How to Set Up a Zoom Meeting

It’s really easy to set up a Zoom meeting. Honestly, the hardest part is just making a Zoom account, if you don’t have one already, and tracking down all of your invitees' contact information. Thankfully, from a technical standpoint it couldn’t be easier to set up a Zoom meeting.

To set up a Zoom meeting and host, you’ll need to download the Zoom desktop app, or mobile app, depending upon what device you plan on using.

1. Go to Zoom’s website and hit the Download button.

2. Choose where you want to download the app (your Downloads folder is always a good spot). 3. Run the Zoom installer. If you’re on a Mac computer, it will look like this:

The installer will look like this on a Windows computer:

4. Let the installer do its thing, and Zoom should open once everything finishes.

1. Open your app store.

2. Search for Zoom.

3. Hit download.

This is what it looks like on the Apple app store. I have the cloud icon instead of the download icon because I already have the app downloaded.

This is what it will look like on an Android device. Except yours will probably say Download instead of Open (Zoom was already downloaded on this device)

Now that you’ve downloaded the Zoom app, you’ll want to make sure you have a Zoom account. You can sign up for a free Zoom account here. You just need an email address to set up a Zoom account.

Now that you’ve downloaded the app and have your account set up, we can finally host a Zoom meeting.

Open the Zoom app on your computer and follow these steps to set up a Zoom meeting.

1. Hit the New Meeting button. It should be on the top left of the home screen on the Zoom desktop app

2. Smile! You’re on camera. Your virtual meeting room will automatically start after clicking the button. Click the Participants button at the bottom of the screen to invite others to the meeting.

3. Click the invite button on the bottom right of the window that opened after you clicked participants.

4. Start inviting people!

This window will pop up after you click the Invite button.

From here, you have a couple of options of how you want to invite people to your Zoom meeting. You can copy the invitation code and just text or email it directly to somebody. Or you can type a name in your Zoom contacts in the box, select the name you want, and hit the Invite button on the bottom right corner.

The easiest way to get all the contact information you need is to sync your email address with your Zoom account. If you hit the Email tab on the top right, you can sign in to your Gmail or Yahoo Mail account and get your contacts from there.

How to set up a Zoom meeting on the mobile app

Setting up a Zoom meeting on your phone is actually even easier than setting one up on your desktop. First of all, make sure you have the Zoom app downloaded on your phone, and then open it. Once it's open, sign in to your Zoom account, and follow these steps to start your meeting.

1. Click the New Meeting button on the top left of the Meet & Chat screen. It should be the first thing you see after you log in.

2. Follow the prompts to get your meeting started (enable camera and such), and you should see your mug looking right back at you after that. Tap the Participants option at the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

3. From here, you can invite people to your Zoom meeting. You can message folks directly with the invite link, send an email invite, or invite contacts from your Zoom account.