Chapter 19
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 clunky 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 “cave painting” 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 first demonstrate how simple it is to build a stunning Keynote presentation. Then you can see how to start and control your slide display from your keyboard (or even your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch). And don’t forget that you can print your slides and notes so your audience can keep a copy of your brilliant work.
As do the other applications in the iWork suite, Keynote begins the document creation process with a Theme Chooser window. To create a new presentation project, follow these steps:
The Theme Chooser window shown in Figure 19-1 appears. (I have to say that these are probably the most stunning visual building blocks I’ve ever seen in a presentation application.)
Although you don’t necessarily need to select an exact match for the screen resolution of your iMac, it’s a good idea to select the closest value to the maximum resolution of your projector. (If someone else is providing the projector, the Standard size is the more compatible choice.) If you’ll present on a typical high-resolution computer monitor, widescreen will provide a better display.
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 from within the application:
If the project is stored on your hard drive, the All My Files location can quickly display all your documents, or you can use the Search box at the top of the Open dialog to locate the document by name or by some of the text it contains.
Because Keynote provides full support for the OS X Auto-Save feature, saving your work often isn’t as critical as it used to be. To safeguard your work in a world of power failures, though, follow these steps:
If you’re saving a document that hasn’t yet been saved, the familiar Save As sheet appears.
By default, Keynote saves the project directly to your iCloud folder (iCloud appears in the Where pop-up menu), making it available to other Macs and iOS devices using the same Apple ID. To select a location not available from 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.
Ready for the 5-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 19-2:
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 Slides list by choosing View⇒Navigator.
Keynote creates a single Title slide when you first create a project. However, not many presentations are complete with just a single slide! To add more slides to your project, use one of these methods:
Keynote adds the new slide to your Slides list and automatically switches to the new slide in the Layout pane.
To move slides to different positions in the Slides list (that is, change the order in your Keynote presentation), drag each slide thumbnail to the desired spot in the list.
All the text and graphics placeholders on your first Title slide appear within boxes. Keynote uses these boxes to manipulate text and graphics. You can resize a box (and its contents) by clicking the box and dragging one of the handles that appear around the edges of the box. (Your cursor will change into a double-sided arrow when you’re “in the zone.”) A side selection handle drags only its edge of the frame, whereas corner selection handles resize both adjoining edges of the selection frame.
Boxes make it easy to move text and graphics together (as a single 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 19-3, I’m moving a box on the slide to a new location, and Keynote has supplied an alignment line to help me place it correctly.
To delete an image, just click it to select it and press the Delete key.
As with Pages, which also uses boxes for text layout, you can add or edit text in Keynote with ease. For example, say you have a box with the placeholder text Double-click to edit
. Just double-click in that box, 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 old text with the new text you type.
To delete text, click and drag across the characters to highlight them; then press Delete. You can also delete an entire box and all its contents: Right-click the offending box and choose Delete from the 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.
Keynote doesn’t restrict you to the default fonts for the theme you chose. It’s easy to format the text in your slides: a different font family, font color, text alignment, and text attributes (such as bolding and italicizing) on the fly.
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:
As I mention earlier, you can type presenter’s text notes in the Notes pane. I use them for displaying related topic points while presenting my slideshow. 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 that pane is hidden, choose View⇒Show Presenter Notes, or click the View button at the far left of the Keynote toolbar and choose Show Presenter Notes. When you’re done adding notes, click in the Slides list or the Layout pane to return to editing mode.
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 at the spot you want within your document.
You can also use the Media Browser. To do so, click the Media button on the toolbar and then click the Photos, Music, or Movies tab to select the desired type. Keynote displays the contents of your various media collections (such as your iPhoto and iTunes libraries). When you find the file you want to add, drag it to the spot you want in the document. Figure 19-4 illustrates the Media Browser in action.
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:
The shape appears in your document.
As with image boxes, you can resize or move shapes. Earlier in this chapter, read about how to do just that.
You want to “send the shape to the back” so that any text you enter sits in front of the shape — not hidden behind it.
The heart of a Keynote presentation is the slideshow that you build from the slides you’ve created. A Keynote slideshow is typically presented as a full-screen presentation, with slides appearing in linear order as they are sorted in the Slides list.
You run a Keynote slideshow simply by clicking the Play button on the toolbar or by choosing Play⇒Play Slideshow from the menu. You can advance to the next slide by clicking, or by pressing the right bracket key, which looks like this: ].
Of course, other controls are available besides just the ones that advance to the next slide! Table 19-1 illustrates the key shortcuts you’ll use most often during a slideshow.
Table 19-1 Keynote Slideshow Shortcut Keys
Key |
Action |
] (right bracket) |
Next slide |
[ (left bracket) |
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 |
Okay, I’ll be honest: I don’t always print handouts for every presentation I give. However, if you’re presenting a lengthy slideshow with plenty of information that you’d like your audience to remember or refer to later, nothing beats handouts that include scaled-down images of your slides (and, optionally, your presenter’s notes).
You’re not limited to just paper, though! You can also use Keynote to create an electronic PDF (portable document format) file instead of a printed handout, which your audience members can download from your website. Or, if you’re an educator with access to an interactive whiteboard (such as a SMART Board), you can use this new technology with Keynote.
To print your slides and notes, follow these steps:
Keynote displays the Print sheet that you see in Figure 19-5. (Note that some printer-specific features may be different on your screen.)