Is there a Keynote Viewer for Windows?

Question

Is there a Keynote Viewer for Windows?

Hi,

I have an iMac and I'm considering buying iWork as a replacement to Microsoft Office. The thing is, as a University post grad I have to give a lot of presentations on a laptop they supplied me with which is a HP Windows machine. Is there any way (other than exporting to translated formats such as MOV or SWF) to play back a presentation in the original KeyNote software format on a Windows machine? Is there a viewer I can download? And if not, why not?

Thanks

Stuart

iMac (late 2006), Mac OS X (10.4.10), 20", 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD

Posted on Aug 15, 2007 8:01 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Kyn Drake

Level 7

21,591 points

Aug 15, 2007 8:23 AM in response to Stuart Mchattie

No, there's not a Keynote Viewer for Windows.

I've always been of the feeling that iWork isn't and probably will never be a replacement for Microsoft Office. If you are in a position where you don't need to share documents with others that are using Microsoft Office (that's me, some home users, etc.) then Keynote is an excellent presentation program that easily makes my presentations better than anyone else's.

If you're in an area where you need to exchange docs with Office users, you'd be doing yourself a disservice by using anything other than Office. Keynote may look a bit better, but if the quality of the presentation is really about you sharing it rather than just presenting it, Keynote and PowerPoint doesn't mix. You'd end up spending a lot of extra time and effort troubleshooting the things you can't do in PowerPoint for your Keynote export AND you'll be denying yourself the use of certain things PowerPoint can do that Keynote doesn't.

Given a choice between using iWork and Office, many Mac users would choose iWork. Unfortunately, in most business environments, there's not really a choice.

Message was edited by: Kyn Drake

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Answer 2

loops

Level 1

5 points

Aug 17, 2007 10:23 PM in response to Stuart Mchattie

One simple way around this is to export to Power Point (Win). Keynote looks a lot better graphically, and while the export isn't perfect, Power Point benefits from Keynote graphics and looks a lot better, esp. with commercial templates available for Keynote. The export is very fast. I don't find much tweaking is necessary. If you are going to export though, don't overdue transitions and etc.

End result is your fellow students can use the PPT viewer.

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Answer 3

Aug 18, 2007 8:40 AM in response to loops

One caveat with the export to PowerPoint: PPT can't handle many of Keynote's transitions and effects, and I have yet to have a PPT export respect animation timings and triggers.

If I have to make a Keynote presentation accessible to PC users, I'll export as PDF. You lose the animations and transitions, but the slides remain gorgeous. Just be sure to appropriately check/uncheck "include all stages of builds" as per your needs.

Not many people realize that Adobe Acrobat & Reader have full-screen presentation abilities. It's a reliable way to translate Keynote presentations for the Windows crowd.

And let me throw in my $0.02 and endorse a Windows "Keynote Viewer" application. It would really help with adoption of Keynote.

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Answer 4

Aug 18, 2007 8:52 AM in response to Stuart Mchattie

Thanks to everyone. I still think I will get iWork when I upgrade to Leopard, but I am a little disappointed that it won't be a solution to getting away from Office. Hopefully Apple will take the advice given here and produce viewer applications for their formats in Windows. To preserve the transition effects would be amazing and would make me not even have to doubt purchasing iWork. I'd even pay a small amount more for the package, just to get this functionality, though I don't think I should have to since Microsoft have viewers for their older formats that are free.

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Answer 5

Tulse

Level 5

5,806 points

Aug 18, 2007 9:30 AM in response to Stuart Mchattie

You mentioned using Quicktime in your original post, and frankly that is still the best option for viewing full-quality Keynote presentations on Windows. It is essentially no different than using a viewer app -- any Keynote-specific viewer would have to be installed on the Windows machine, just as Quicktime is, and any viewer would also not be able to edit KN presentations, just as with Quicktime. I think Apple would be much better served in ensuring that Quicktime preserves all the features of KN, rather than creating a separate viewer for just that app. (Perhaps those with more experience on the Windows side can comment about specific pitfalls of using KN in Quicktime on Windows.)

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Answer 6

Oct 24, 2007 7:05 AM in response to Tulse

They only problem I can for see is that a lot of buisinesses restrict what programs they can install on there machines. A lot of them don't have quicktime but every one has powerpoint. I have know idea how they can get around that besides improving the Power Point export function or save the file so that a power point viewer can read it. Don't get me wrong I would love to see a keynote viewer but it wouldn't be a cure all sadly.

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Answer 7

Tulse

Level 5

5,806 points

Oct 24, 2007 8:39 AM in response to ben and meg

If the goal is to move away from Microsoft Office, rather than necessarily move to iWork, there are several open-source projects that provide MS Office compatibility (such as NeoOffice).

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Answer 8

Willy P

Level 1

10 points

Oct 25, 2007 2:57 PM in response to Stuart Mchattie

I do not know a windows keynote player, but it seems to me that shoud be difficult technically. Keynote presentations are transparent in that they are at the heart just an XML file. Hummm, someone (brighter than I) should be able to figure this out.

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Answer 9

Oct 25, 2007 4:54 PM in response to Willy P

Well, definitely someone smarter than I as well. Perhaps it is time for the wonderful people who develop applications for mac users to get on this topic. If we believe the outcries from the forum many people are in need of a better way to share our keynote presentations with the windows world. I agree with Tulse that apple has QT and that where the effort should be to insure great transitions. I just exported a very short 4 slides project and it was really choppy in the builds.
Just ranting I guess, but I don't want to use something other than keynote.
Mireille

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Answer 10

Tulse

Level 5

5,806 points

Oct 25, 2007 5:51 PM in response to Willy P

Welcome to the forums, Willy P!

The problem is that while the file format itself is very straightforward and transparent, the actual execution relies on OS X-specific technologies, such as Quartz/Core Image. If Apple were to build a viewer that could render Keynote presentations "on-the-fly", that player would have to have all those OS-level capabilities built-in, and that's potentially a huge task.

Furthermore, the Keynote document format is actually a "package", or collection of files, and this approach to documents isn't understood natively on Windows, so again, there would have to be some sort of exporter/translator just to get the files on to Windows properly, much less to play them.

Given all this, I really think that Apple's best approach is to ensure that QT export works properly, and that QT on Windows plays well. Interactive QT gives you all the playback features of Keynote, which is really all one wants on Windows anyway (if one needs to edit files on Windows, that's an entirely different matter).

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Answer 11

Nov 1, 2007 2:08 AM in response to Mark Rushton

Where can I find out more about using Acrobat Reader for full screen presentations. This is indeed new to me!

Sincerely,
Howard

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Answer 12

Nov 1, 2007 3:28 AM in response to Freedom Coach

Freedom Coach wrote:
Where can I find out more about using Acrobat Reader for full screen presentations. This is indeed new to me!

I do not think there is any magic to it. You create a document and then display it in Adobe reader as full screen (View > Full Screen Mode).

Of course, if you have more advanced Adobe tools like Acrobat Pro, InDesign and the rest, you can include rotating 3D objects, movies, and so on. But that does not come for free.

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