One day, I decided that I was sick and tired of having to change the background and manually lay out all the elements in my keynote presentation. So, rather than not making any more, I decided that I would make my own theme. So, I went into keynote, designed a good looking theme, and went to File>Save Theme... After saving my beautiful theme I closed my document and opened up a new one. However, when I chose my theme from the theme chooser dialog box, nothing happened. It just showed me the "white" theme I had built off of. Well, I went onto the internet and found no help. None. Since I'm not one to pay for something I can probably figure out myself, I started looking. And here's how you do it.
How to create themes in keynote '08.
Creating themes in keynote really isn't that hard. There's just one secret step. Rather than building your theme from a slide, you have to build your theme from a master slide. To do this, merely drag the divider that's underneath the "Themes" button. This will reveal all the masters. Now, go about editing them as you please. Changing backgrounds. Adding in pictures. Setting fonts. You name it. Once you've done all this, go to File>Save Theme... and save your theme to the Themes folder. (Automatically selected.) That's it! It will now show up inside the theme dialog box.
Now that you know this information, go out and design some cool theme. Then, submit it to be posted on the blog!
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9/2/07
How To Create Themes In Keynote '08
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27 comments:
Thank you!!!! I couldn't figure this out myself.
Wow!
You left out a few things that make me scratch my head.
#1 you didn't use the title and bullet boxes on the master slides, which means none of your text will show up if you ever use Outline mode.
#2 You didn't make the text you DID add into a Text Placeholder using the Format>Advanced menu. If you had, ALL text you designated that way would be editable on the regular slides. The way you did it means you must visit the master slide to change the text (though I noticed you did do this for the photo).
#3 You didn't dress up the first REGULAR slide as your preview slide. If you do this, your theme will have a real icon in the theme selector, instead of just a blank thumbnail.
There are also a few other little tricks that are found in the layout>advanced menu, such as designating the default shape, text, charts and table styles.
You can find a few other keynote tutorials at Keynoteuser.com though this tip isn't covered specifically, and we're in the process of writing some more for the new site that's being built.
By the way, theme making in Keynote 08 is MUCH easier thanks to that tiny little feature you found-media placeholders. Before this themes had to use photo cutouts, which were slide sized images with holes in them that had to be created outside Keynote.
#1 you didn't use the title and bullet boxes on the master slides, which means none of your text will show up if you ever use Outline mode.
How would you set it up with Title and Bullet boxes?
#2 You didn't make the text you DID add into a Text Placeholder using the Format>Advanced menu. If you had, ALL text you designated that way would be editable on the regular slides. The way you did it means you must visit the master slide to change the text (though I noticed you did do this for the photo).
Actually, I should have known this. When I was messing around with it before, I set the text as placeholders. So, I didn't have this problem. :D
#3 You didn't dress up the first REGULAR slide as your preview slide. If you do this, your theme will have a real icon in the theme selector, instead of just a blank thumbnail.
This doens't seem THAT important if you're making your own themes for your own purposes. However, I could understand doing this if you're going to share your themes. It also explains how apple got their themes in the dialog box to appear so nice.
Thanks for pointing these out!
MacTipper
My Mac-Tipping Blog
On the Slide Master inspector, you can turn on the Title and Body boxes, then move them around and resize them. I usually use them first, then add extra boxes if I need them.
Ah! You rock! Why on earth isn't the masters tab visible? It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere!
Primo... Thanks a ton.
Dave
Thanks!!! You saved me a lot of time :)
You are a god send!! Thank you so much for posting this!!!
thank you so much to show it for us, it's a good study.
thank you so much for this study, it's very helpful for me , thank you again
you da man Primo. Thanks for taking the time to produce this video. What video capture software are you using for the Mac?
Problem: I created my master and saved... it looks great in Keynote... however, when I print to PDF the pages look faded... Any solution?
BTW... this does not happen with the Keynote themes... only the themes I create...
D
Well done.
Thanks a ton!
Well done for figuring that one out and posting!;-)
Thank you!!!!!
Thanks - I can just double other people - You helped me and saved my time!
Thank you for saving me a lot of time, I can now rock out on making themes, Thanks a million!
Though a long-time Machead, I'm new to Keynote. I'd gotten the basics down but I hadn't made the connection about designing my own from a master. It all made sense rightaway. Thanks very much for sharing the points!
Great post! Thanks for sharing this it really helped me on presentation.
THANK YOU!!!! Great post!
Thanks for the tip, helped me alot!
//Simon
THANK YOU MUCH!
Great post!!! This was crazy, the 'secret' master theme pull down.
Amazing.
Thank you.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!! You're a star! :-D
Wow! thank so much! I had created this really pretty design on photoshop and didn't quite know how to make it into a slide, I knew it had something to do with the masters, but I never knew I could just edit them like this! thanks! I am making a new sparkley theme!
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