iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Saving Your Slideshow

Hopefully you’ve been saving your slideshow right from the moment you first created it, tapping ⌘-S obsessively to save your presentation every few minutes…just in case. If not, take care of that crucial bit of business right now. Choose File → Save or press ⌘-S to save your file. The first time you save a Keynote document, the Save dialog box drops into view, letting you choose a name and location to use when saving your new slideshow. If you’re not familiar with the Mac’s standard Save window, refer to In Your Own Words for a primer.

Automatic Backups

The iWork programs don’t have an auto-save feature, which means that Keynote saves your slideshow only when you specifically tell it to do so. Get in the habit of hitting ⌘-S early and often to avoid unpleasant surprises.

One thing you can do, though, for a bit of added protection is to set Keynote to automatically save two versions of your document. Every time you save, this feature saves a copy of the previously saved version of your file so that you always have two copies of your slideshow. To set up this extra safety net, go to Keynote → Preferences, click the General button, and turn on the “Back up previous version option.” See Backing Up the Previous Version of a Document for more about how this feature works.