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 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 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. Naturally, Keynote is a perfect match for your MacBook, allowing you to create or edit a presentation while you're on the road.

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 or iPod touch). Heck, we'll even print your slides and notes so that your audience can keep a copy of your brilliant work!

Creating a New Keynote Project

As do the other applications in the iWork '09 suite, Keynote begins the document creation process with a Template ...

Get MacBook® All-in-One For Dummies® now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.