Put the right page on the screen in front of the room

Three stages, and only the last happens while the judge is watching.

Import. Create a trial with the case name, then add documents with the file dialog or by dragging a stack onto the exhibit list. Each exhibit carries one PDF, an exhibit number, a name, a description and a status, and numbering follows whatever scheme the parties agreed, from 001 to A, B or P-12.

Prepare. Work the exhibit over the way you would with a highlighter: mark the sentence you will read out, box a signature, put an arrow on the figure that does not add up. Markup autosaves and is stored apart from the document, so the original PDF is never modified. The visual redaction overlay is a black box drawn over the page for presentation only: it keeps the covered text off the screen, but it does not remove the underlying content from the PDF file, and Exhibit Room does not do permanent redaction.

Present. The page fills the display, your markup comes with it, and the controls move to the keyboard. The longer walk-through is in how to present exhibits in court.

Presentation mode is bare on purpose. The display carries the exhibit page, the exhibit number and name, and a page counter. No sidebar, no tab strip, no preview of what you were reading a minute ago.

All three elements answer to Settings: hide the label, hide the page counter on its own, and choose a light or dark background, which keeps glare down on a bright projector or reads closer to paper on a flat monitor.

Prepared annotations show in presentation, and nothing can be edited there by accident. More on that screen in presentation mode.

A mouse is awkward in front of a jury: you look down, aim at something small, and the room watches you do it. Presentation runs instead from keys you can reach without breaking your line of sight.

Left and right arrows move a page at a time, as do Page Up and Page Down. Home goes to the first page, End to the last. Plus and minus zoom. F fits the whole page; W fits the page width, which is what you want for a dense letter. Digits followed by Enter jump to a page number. E opens the exhibit switcher: type a number or part of a name, press Enter, and the next exhibit is up. Esc leaves presentation.

Write the page numbers you expect to use on your outline, and rehearse until next page, fit width and switch exhibit are muscle memory. Settings keeps a shortcuts reference.

Exhibit Room shows one fullscreen view, and there is no separate presenter view on a second monitor. The usual arrangement is therefore a mirrored display: what you see, the room sees, so notes and outlines belong on paper or a second device.

Courtrooms differ on the physical side, from an HDMI lead at counsel table to a wall plate only the clerk can switch on. Find out which before the day, and bring the adapter your machine needs.

Then look at the picture from where the jury sits, since aspect ratio differences letterbox a page or crop its edges. The courtroom technology checklist goes further on equipment.

Many courtrooms have weak signal or a policy against connecting. Exhibit Room is local-first, so importing, annotating, reordering and presenting run on your own machine, and nothing about your case is uploaded.

A license is activated once and re-checked occasionally, and neither step interrupts you: the app does not lock in the middle of work because it is offline. There is more on offline courtroom presentation.

Because nothing syncs, moving a trial between machines is deliberate. Export it as a single .exhibitroom file holding the metadata, the PDFs and the annotations, and import it on the other computer. That covers the second machine your license allows and doubles as a backup.