Document Settings for Presentations

Learn about the various documents settings for a presentation in Keynote for the Mac.

Before you create a presentation or slideshow in Keynote, there are a few settings you will want to look at. This includes the slide size, presentation type, and theme. Why? If you change some of these after you’ve created your presentation, it could change how your slides look! So you’ll want to set these settings first. Take a look at the document settings for presentations in this video for Keynote on the Mac.

Video Transcription 0:02
In this video, we’re going to take a look at our documents settings, we have four Keynote presentations on the Mac. This is where we can change the theme for our presentation, set the slide size, as well as the presentation type. I like to look at these documents settings before I get too far into creating my presentation. Let’s see why. Let’s go to my Mac. To look at your document settings, what we do is we go over to the right, and in our toolbar you’re going to see document. This is where we find all of our document settings. Now what we’re going to do is focus on document here, we also do have audio.

0:43
This is where we can add our background audio I have a separate video on this is where we can add a soundtrack to our entire slideshow. You’ll want to do this towards the end of your presentation towards the end of creating your presentation. But before you get too far into your presentation, you will want to take a look at your document settings. So what are we looking at here? Well, the first thing that you’ll want to do is go and set your slide size. So we have a few different options here. I can set it for standard, as well as widescreen. And then I can also set it for a custom slide size. I would daresay that in most cases, what you’ll do is you’ll use widescreen this is what most computers are set up for as well as televisions now. Now the reason why I like to recommend doing this first thing before you get too far into your presentation is because it can change the layout of your different slides. As an example, if we look at this slideshow here, I’m looking at this slide here with the tulip. Watch what happens when I change this over to 16 by nine, it’s going to change this particular slide here. So I changed this. And now we can see we have these borders on either side of it. I mean, it’s not bad, it doesn’t make it look bad. But it does change the layout. So if you have your slideshow set to a particular layout, if you go and change the slide size later, it could move things around. So what I recommend doing is setting up the slide size. As one of the first things that you do, you may want to do this even before you add your first slide. Each one of these slides here when we add a slide, each one of these is separate particular slide size. So we want to make sure that we set this first. So now I have my slide size, I’m going to have to go and rearrange some of these to make sure it fits. But that’s okay, I do not have that many slides.

2:48
The next thing that we can do is we can set what type of presentation it is. Now what do I mean by this? Well, basically what we have is we have three different types of presentations, we have normal, which is probably what most people are going to use. The normal presentation is where the presenter sets the pace. The presenter is the one that moves to the next slide by clicking on a button or clicking on the keyboard. The next option here links only what this is for is the person watching the presentation. They’re the ones that can set the pace. When they want to move the next slide, they click a button. And then it’ll go to the next slide. So they are controlling the pace. You will see these usually in museums, it’s a self running presentation, or I should say it’s a presentation that doesn’t require a presenter. And then our last option here we have self plain. This is where the presentation itself sets the pace. So when I select this, what I can do is I can set how long each slide is going to show by default. In most cases, again, what I think people will use is normal, but you can set it up for links only, as well as soft plain.

4:11
So I’m going to put this back as normal. We also have a few more options here for slideshow settings. Do we want it to automatically play upon opening? Do we want it to loop the slideshow? And do we want it to restart if it is idle. So when do we use these? Well, if you’re using a self running or links only presentation or creating a self running or links only presentation, what you may want to do is have it automatically open or automatically play when the presentation is open. So then you don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is just open up the presentation and it will automatically start playing. It could be for links only or self playing. We also have loop slideshow. This is primarily for Again, links only and self playing when it gets to the into the slideshow. What do you want it to do? Well, if

5:02
you’re presenting the slideshow, in most cases, it’ll be the end of the presentation. But you could have it loop and go back to the beginning. And this is what you’ll want with links only in self playing. And then we have restart, show off idle for so many minutes. This is great for a links only. So again, the person watching the presentation is setting the pace, they’re clicking a link, it goes to the next slide, they click a link, it goes to the next slide. And then they walk away from that presentation. The next person that walks up to that presentation, if it’s in a kiosk, you want them to start from the beginning. So what this will do when you restart, you can set it for 15 minutes, or even five minutes. If it’s sitting idle for five minutes, it’s going to go back to the beginning. So these are primarily used for links only and self plain, but you can use them for a normal presentation as well.

6:01
I would dare say that in most cases, again, these will be unchecked, because most presentations are set for normal. But you do have those options, and then up towards the top here, we can change our theme. And we want to do this towards the beginning as well. Because if I go and change this theme here to a different theme, it is going to change how these look. And when you’re set up a lot of slides, you want to make sure that you have your theme set before you create those slides, you do not want to change the theme. After you’ve created your slideshow, it could lead to unpredictable results, it could change the layout of some of your slides. So again, what we want to do is we want to make sure that we go through these documents settings before we create too many slides here in our presentation.

6:52
Our last option here, we could set pretty much anytime towards the beginning or the end of the presentation creation process. We can set if we want to require a password open it. So I get done with my presentation. What I can also do now is set a password for anyone to enter before they can open up the presentation so you can lock it. Again, you do not have to do this at the beginning or the end. You can do this at any time during the creation process. So those are our documents settings we have for Keynote on the Mac. Basically what we’ll want to do is set our slide size we want to do this before we get too far into creating our presentation. We want to set our themes earlier in the creation process. And then we can also set the presentation type and most cases it is going to be normal, but we can set it for links only like it’s going to be in a kiosk or self running. So those are different documents settings for Keynote on the Mac.