Chapter 3: Building Presentations with Keynote

In This Chapter

Creating a new presentation

Adding slides

Using selection boxes

Entering and editing text

Formatting text

Adding presenter’s notes

Inserting media and shapes

Running a slideshow

Printing slides and notes

It seems like only yesterday that I was giving business presentations with a klunky overhead projector and black-and-white acetate transparencies. Fancy color gradients and animation were unheard of, and the only sound my presentations made was the droning of the projector’s fan. I might as well have been using tree bark and chalk.

Thank goodness those days are gone forever because cutting-edge presentation software like Keynote makes slide creation easy and — believe it or not — fun! This is the application that Steve Jobs once used for his Macworld keynotes every year, and there’s so much visual candy available that you’ll never need to shout to wake your audience again.

In this chapter, I demonstrate how simple it is to build a stunning Keynote presentation, and how to start and control your slide display from your keyboard (or even your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch). And don’t forget to print your slides and notes so that your audience can keep a copy of your brilliant work!

Creating a New Keynote Project

Like other applications in the iWork suite, Keynote begins the document creation process with a Template Chooser window. To create a new presentation project, follow these steps:

1. Click the Launchpad icon on the Dock.

2. Click the Keynote icon.

The Theme Chooser window that you see in Figure 3-1 appears. (I have to say that these are probably the most stunning visual building blocks I’ve ever seen in a presentation application. You should have heard the “oohs” and “ahhs” from the Macworld faithful when Steve Jobs demonstrated Keynote for the first time on the big screen!)

3. Open the Slide Size pop-up menu at the bottom of the screen to choose the resolution for your completed slides.

Although you don’t necessarily need to select an exact match for the screen resolution of your Mac, I recommend opting for the closest value to the maximum resolution of your projector. (If someone else is providing the projector, the default value of 1024 x 768 is a good standard to use.) If you’re using a second monitor during your presentation, select the native resolution for that monitor instead.

4. Click the template that most closely matches your needs.

5. Click the Choose button to open a new document with the template you selected.

Opening a Keynote Presentation

If an existing Keynote presentation file is visible in a Finder window, you can double-click the document icon to open the project. If Keynote is already running, however, follow these steps to load a project:

1. Press +O to display the Open dialog.

2. Click the desired drive in the Devices list at the left of the dialog; then drill down through folders and subfolders until you locate the Keynote project.

Alternatively, you can click the All My Files location in the Open dialog sidebar to display your documents, or click in the Search box at the upper-right side of the screen and type a portion of the file name.

3. Double-click the filename to load it.

If you want to open a Keynote document that you’ve recently edited, things get even easier! Just choose File⇒Open Recent, and you can then open the document with a single click from the submenu that appears. (Note that the Template Chooser window has both Open Recent and Open Existing File buttons as well.)

Saving Your Presentation

Because Keynote provides full support for Mountain Lion’s Auto Save feature, saving your work often isn’t as critical as it used to be. But if you’re the prudent type and want to safeguard your work in a world of power failures, follow these steps the first time you save a presentation:

1. Press +S.

If you’re saving a document that hasn’t yet been saved, the familiar Save As sheet appears.

2. Type a filename for your new document.

3. From the Where pop-up menu, choose a location to save the document.

To select a location not on the Where pop-up menu, click the button with the down-arrow symbol to expand the sheet. You can also create a new folder from the expanded sheet.

4. Click Save.

After you save a Keynote presentation for the first time, you can create a version of that document by choosing File⇒Save a Version. To revert the current presentation to an older version, choose File⇒Revert to Saved. Keynote gives you the option of reverting to the last saved version, or you can click Older Version to browse multiple versions of the presentation and choose one of those to revert to.

Putting Keynote to Work

Ready for the five-cent tour of the Keynote window? Launch the application and create or load a project, and you’ll see the tourist attractions shown in Figure 3-2:

Slides list: Use this thumbnail list of all the slides in your project to help you navigate quickly. Click a thumbnail to switch instantly to that slide.

The Slides list can also display your project in outline format, allowing you to check all your discussion points. (This is a great way to ferret out any “holes” in your presentation’s flow.) While in outline mode, you can still jump directly to any slide by clicking the slide’s title in the outline. To display the outline, choose View⇒Outline. You can switch back to the default Navigator Slide list by choosing View⇒Navigator.

Layout pane: Your slide appears in its entirety in this pane. You can add elements and edit the content of the slide from the Layout pane.

Toolbar: Like the toolbar in Pages and Numbers, the Keynote toolbar makes it easy to find the most common controls you’ll use while designing and editing your slides. Clicking an icon on the toolbar performs an action, just like selecting a menu item does.

Notes pane: If you decide to add notes to one or more slides (either for your own use or to print as additional information for your audience), choose View⇒Show Presenter Notes to open the Notes pane. This text box appears under the Layout pane.

Format bar: Keynote displays this button strip underneath the Keynote toolbar, allowing you to format selected text, paragraphs, and lists on the fly.

Adding Slides

Sure, Keynote creates a single Title slide when you first create a project, but not many presentations are complete with just a single slide! To add more slides to your project, use one of these methods:

Click the New button on the Keynote toolbar.

Choose New Slide from the Slide menu.

Press +Shift+N.

Right-click (or Control-click) in the Slides list and choose New Slide from the contextual menu.

Keynote adds the new slide to your Slides list and automatically switches to the new slide in the Layout pane.

Need a slide that’s very similar to an existing slide you’ve already designed? Right-click the existing slide and choose Duplicate to create a new slide just like it. (Consider it “cloning without the science.”) Then edit the dupe.

To move slides to different positions in the Slides list (and therefore a different order in your Keynote slideshow), drag that slide thumbnail to the new desired spot in the list.

Working with Text and Graphics Boxes

You’ve probably noticed that all the text within your first Title slide appears within boxes. Keynote uses boxes to manipulate text and graphics. You can resize a box (and its contents) by clicking and dragging one of the handles that appear around the edges of the box. (Your mouse cursor changes into a double-sided arrow when you’re “in the zone.”) The side-selection handles drag only that edge of the frame, and the corner-selection handles resize both adjoining edges of the selection frame.

To keep the proportions of the box constrained, hold down Shift while dragging the corner handles.

Boxes make it easy to move text and graphics together (as a unit) to another location within the Layout pane. Click in the center of the box and drag the box to the desired spot; Keynote displays alignment lines to help you align the box with other elements around it (or with regular divisions of the slide, like horizontal center). As you can see in Figure 3-3, I’m moving a box on the slide to a new location, and Keynote has supplied alignment lines to help me place it correctly.

To select text or graphics within a box, double-click the box.

If you’re resizing a photo in a box, don’t forget to hold down the Shift key while you drag the frame to preserve the aspect ratio of the image so that the vertical and horizontal proportions remain fixed. You can also flip images horizontally or vertically from the Arrange menu.

Adding and Editing Slide Text

Like in Pages and Numbers — which also use boxes for text layout — Keynote allows you to add or edit text with ease. For example, double-click in a box with the text Double-click to edit, and the placeholder text disappears, leaving the field ready to accept new text. Any new text you type appears at the blinking cursor within the box.

To edit existing text in your Keynote document, click using the bar-shaped cursor to select just the right spot in the text, and drag the insertion cursor across the characters to highlight them. Type the replacement text, and Keynote obligingly replaces the text that was there with the text you type.

If you want to delete existing text, click and drag across the characters to highlight them; press Delete. You can also delete an entire box and all its contents: Right-click (or Control-click) the offending box and choose Delete from the contextual menu that appears.

When the contents of a box are just right and you’re finished entering or editing text, click anywhere outside the box to hide it from view. You can always click the text again to display the box later.

Formatting Slide Text for the Perfect Look

Keynote doesn’t restrict you to the default fonts for the theme you chose. It’s easy to format the text in your slides, choosing a different font family, font color, text alignment, and text attributes such as bolding and italicizing on the fly, whenever you like.

Select the desired text by double-clicking a box and then dragging the text cursor to highlight the characters. Now apply your formatting using one of these two methods:

The Format bar: The font controls on the Format bar work just like the controls on the toolbar: Either click a font control to display a pop-up menu, or click a button to immediately perform an action. Opening the Font Size pop-up menu, for example, displays a range of sizes for the selected text; with a single click on the B (bold) button, you’ll add the bold attribute to the highlighted characters.

The Format menu: The controls on the Format menu generally mirror those on the Format bar. To change the alignment from the Format menu, click Format and hover the mouse cursor over the Text menu item. To change text attributes, click Format and hover your mouse over the Font menu.

Using Presenter’s Notes in Your Project

As I mention earlier, you can type text notes in the Notes pane. I use them for displaying alternate topic points while presenting a slide show. However, you can also print the notes for a project along with the slides, so presenter’s notes are also great for including reminders and To Do points for your audience in handouts.

To type your notes, just click within the Notes pane; if it’s hidden, choose View⇒Show Presenter Notes. When you’re done adding notes, click in the Slides list or the Layout pane to return to editing mode.

To display your notes while practicing, use Keynote’s Rehearsal feature. Click Play and choose Rehearse Slideshow, and you can scroll through the notes while the slideshow runs. (More on slideshows in a second.)

Every Good Presentation Needs Media

Adding audio, photos, and movies to a slide is drag-and-drop easy in Keynote! Simply drag an image, an audio, or a movie file from a Finder window and place it where you want within your document.

You can also use the Media Browser. Click the Media button on the toolbar and then click the Audio, Photos, or Movies button to select the desired type. Keynote displays the contents of your various media collections — like your iPhoto and iTunes libraries — or you can also navigate to the file’s location on your hard drive, or type in a filename in the Search box at the bottom of the browser. When you find the file that you want to add, drag it to the spot you want in the document. Figure 3-4 illustrates the Media Browser in action.

Adding a Background Shape

Text often stands out on a slide when it sits on top of a background shape. To add a shape (such as a rectangle or circle) as a background for your text, follow these steps:

1. Click the insertion cursor in the location you want.

2. Click the Shapes button on the Keynote toolbar and choose a shape.

The shape appears in your document. You can click in the Fill box on the Format bar to choose a different color and an opacity level.

3. Click the center of the shape and drag it to a new spot.

Like image boxes, shapes can be resized or moved.

4. When the shape is properly positioned and sized, select it and choose Arrange⇒Send to Back.

Creating Your Keynote Slideshow

The heart of a Keynote presentation is the slideshow that you build from the slides you’ve created. A Keynote slideshow is typically presented full screen.

In its simplest form, you can always run a slideshow from a Keynote project by clicking the Play button on the toolbar, or by choosing Play⇒Play Slideshow. Advance to the next slide by clicking your mouse or by pressing the right bracket key, which looks like this: ].

If you’d prefer a presentation that runs automatically by itself (often called kiosk mode), click the Inspector icon on the toolbar and then click the Document button (the first button at the top of the Inspector). Now open the Presentation pop-up menu and choose Self-Playing. Click the Close button to close the Inspector window, and you’re all set!

Of course, other controls are available besides just the ones that advance to the next slide! Table 3-1 illustrates the key shortcuts you’ll use most often during a slideshow.

Table 3-1 Keynote Slideshow Shortcut Keys

Key or Key Combination	Action
] (right bracket)	Next slide
P	Previous slide
Home	Jump to first slide
End	Jump to last slide
C	Show or hide the pointer
(number)	Jump to the corresponding slide in the Slides list
U	Scroll notes up
D	Scroll notes down
N	Show current slide number
H	Hide slideshow and display last application used (the presentation appears as a minimized icon on the Dock)
B	Pause slideshow and display a black screen (press any key to resume the slideshow)
Esc	Quit

Keynote offers a number of settings that you can tweak to fine-tune your slideshow. To display these settings, choose Keynote⇒Preferences and click the Slideshow button in the Preferences window.

If you have an iPhone or iPod touch handy and you’ve installed the Apple Keynote Remote application on your device, display the Preferences window and click the Remote button to link your iPhone or iPod touch to your Mac and Keynote. Now you can use your handheld device as a remote and use it during your slideshow!

Printing Your Slides and Notes

Okay, I’ll be honest: I don’t always print handouts for every presentation I give. Some of the slideshows I run are short introductions to hands-on demonstrations. However, if you’re presenting a lengthy slideshow with plenty of information that you’d like your audience to remember, nothing beats handouts that include scaled-down images of your slides (and, optionally, your presenter’s notes).

You can also use Keynote to create an electronic PDF-format document instead of a printed handout, which your audience members can download from your website. (For the lowdown on PDF printing, visit Chapter 4 in Book VII.)

To print a hard copy of your slides and notes, follow these steps:

1. Within Keynote, choose File⇒Print.

Keynote displays the Print sheet you see in Figure 3-5.

2. Click the desired format.

• To print each slide on a separate page at full size: Click Individual Slides.

• To print each slide on a separate page with the presenter’s notes for that slide: Click Slides with Notes.

• To print the contents of your Slides list in Outline view: Click Outline.

• To print a handout with multiple slides per page (and, optionally, with presenter’s notes): Click Handout. Use the Slides per Page pop-up menu to specify the number of slides that Keynote should print on each page.

3. Select the pages to print.

• To print the entire document: Select All.

• To print a range of selected slides: Select the From radio button and enter the starting and ending pages.

4. (Optional) Set specific options from the Options column.

You can include elements such as the date, borders around each slide, and the slide number as part of each page of the hardcopy.

5. Click the Print button to send the job to your printer.