This is not "a very edge case use". This is a very common use. If you totaled all the time PowerPoint files are open on all PCs, I believe you will find many more hours were with people viewing the PPT on their computer (just as they would read a PDF or Word document) and much less time as part of presentations where full screen usually makes sense. I almost NEVER want to view a PPT on my PC in full screen. 1st on a large monitor it is often too big to view comfortably, and I usually want to switch between the PPT and other applications, often leaving the PPT visible to a page while working in a different window. Making the PowerPoint Viewer 2007 only display in fullscreen is another anti-consumer action by Microsoft to annoy people enough to buy Office 2007. What is needed is the PPT viewer equivalent to the Foxit PDF Reader, for those who want to view but don't need to create PPT files. I don't know of any free alternative viewers that support PPT 2007 format, except maybe OpenOffice and that is pretty heavyweight is all you want is a PPT viewer. It would be great if it were possible to launch the PPT Viewer 2007 from C++ or C# so that it was not fullscreen, but as you mention it does not appear possible from the documentation.