How to Show a PowerPoint or PDF on a Touch Screen — Offline, at a Trade Show or Showroom

Short answer: there are three practical ways to show a PowerPoint on a touch screen without internet. Run PowerPoint itself in kiosk mode on the computer that drives the screen; export the deck to PDF and open it in a full-screen PDF viewer; or use dedicated touch screen presentation software that turns the slides into a swipeable, self-running app with a menu. The first two are free if you already own the software, but visitors get no menu, no videos and no automatic return to the start screen. The third costs money — ExpoScreen, our own tool, is $79 to $199 one-time per project — and is built for unattended screens.

This guide covers all three honestly, then walks through the ExpoScreen way step by step. It is written for marketers and event teams preparing a trade show booth, a showroom or a lobby screen, usually a week or two before the event.

Last updated: September 28, 2026.

• A touch screen driven by Windows or macOS. Large touch panels, kiosks, all-in-one PCs and touch tables almost always run Windows; some showrooms put a Mac mini behind the display. A TV with a touch overlay works the same way.
• The computer, not the screen, decides what you can run. PowerPoint, a PDF viewer or a presentation app is installed on that computer; the panel only shows it and passes touches through.
• A tablet is a different case. An iPad or Android tablet can play slides in the PowerPoint or PDF app, but it cannot run the Windows and macOS software described below, and it is small for a booth. In ExpoScreen a tablet is used as a remote control for the big screen, not as the screen itself.
• Your files: the PPTX, PPT or PDF, plus any videos as separate files (MP4 is the easiest; other formats are converted on upload).

PowerPoint has a built-in kiosk mode. It shows the deck full screen, loops it, and disables the normal controls so that a visitor cannot accidentally close the show. Setting it up takes a few minutes:

1. Open the deck on the computer that drives the touch screen. Go to Slide Show → Set Up Slide Show and choose "Browsed at a kiosk (full screen)". The show loops until someone presses Esc.
2. Put the navigation on the slides themselves: Insert → Shapes → Action Buttons, or hyperlinks that jump to other slides. In kiosk mode this is the only way a visitor can move around.
3. If the deck should run on its own, set automatic timings (Transitions → After) on every slide so it loops without touching.
4. Save as a PowerPoint Show (.ppsx) so the file opens straight into the slideshow, and put a shortcut into the Startup folder if the kiosk should launch it on boot.

Where kiosk mode stops working

• Tap-to-advance and swiping are disabled in kiosk mode. Only the action buttons and hyperlinks you added work — without them the deck is stuck on slide one.
• A licensed copy of PowerPoint has to be installed on the kiosk computer.
• One file is one linear show. A menu of several catalogs, or videos from other files, has to be built by hand as slides with hyperlinks.
• There is no idle reset. If a visitor walks away on slide 40, the next visitor starts on slide 40 unless you added timings that loop back.
• PowerPoint does not lock the operating system. Esc leaves the show, and locking a PC to a single app is a separate setup (Assigned Access on Windows Pro and higher, or third-party kiosk software).

Verdict: fine for a single self-running loop, or for a carefully tested deck with a few linked sections. Painful for a booth that needs a product catalog, several decks and videos side by side.

Export the deck (File → Export → PDF) and open it on the kiosk in a PDF viewer with a full-screen mode — Adobe Acrobat Reader (Ctrl + L), the PDF viewer built into Microsoft Edge, or Preview on macOS. A tap or an arrow key moves to the next page, and on a touch screen that is enough for one brochure or one price list.

• No menu: one PDF is one brochure. Several documents mean several windows to switch between.
• No video. Animations, transitions and embedded videos are gone the moment you export to PDF.
• No idle return to the first page, and the viewer's toolbar and the operating system stay reachable to visitors.

Verdict: the quickest free fallback for a single document, and the safest way to keep fonts and layout intact. Not a booth presentation.

This is what the software category exists for. A dedicated tool takes your slides, PDFs and videos and produces an app that runs full screen, has a menu, plays videos, returns to a screen saver when nobody touches it, and works with no internet at the venue. The differences between tools are mostly about how much you can build and how you pay.

• Intuiface and PandaSuite are full no-code app builders with logic and integrations. Powerful, but subscription-based — Intuiface licenses every device, PandaSuite bills publishing per app — and a full app takes longer to build than a presentation. See our Intuiface alternatives comparison .
• Omnitapps4 is a Windows suite of ready-made touch apps and games (€645 one-time). You configure prebuilt apps rather than build your own structure.
• ExpoScreen (that's us) is built specifically for this job: PPTX, PDF, videos and photos go into a nested menu, and the result is an offline Windows or macOS app for $79 to $199 one-time per project. Building and previewing is free. The rest of this guide shows how.