Can't open Keynote 09 file

Hi,

My problem is this:

I made the keynote presentation on my Imac. Copied the file to my usb storage pin, and tried to open it on my macbook air. Get the same message that the file isnt valid.

It still works on my imac, but i cant bring that to the classroom.

I just recently bougth keynote for both macs, so should be the same version.

Any suggestions?

Will it work better if i mail it or what?

Tried the zip thing etc, and doesnt work.

Thank you!

habjerke

users are reporting that some files appear to lose there properties when copying in Mountain Lion

what OS are you using?

what are the properties when you right click > get info;

file size

name and extension

open with

Hey Nealf,

Yeah I just began rebuilding the presentation from scratch last night (ANNOYING AS ALL ****!!!). Fortunately, someone analyzed the presentation for me using some specialized program and skill, which generated a full list of all the inputed files (jpg, gif, png, mov) in the order in which they appeared in the presentation. That is proving to be incredibly helpful, but it will take me a month or longer to truly rebuild it. Sufficed to say, that I'm backing up this time to two external drives and a cloud.

I'm curious about your experience with Powerpoint 2011. Does it have cool transitions like Keynote?

I always did find it odd that the lastest version of Keynote is '09. I had to do a double take, b/c I thought I may have downloaded the wrong version when I purchased it in 2012.

I was advised to keep the video files small and to make sure the video settings are what you really need. Something that is going to be seen on a laptop or mobile devices like one of my video presentations is a very different situation than on a large HD TV. My advisor said that laptop or any computer monitor video doesn't have to be higher than 2,000 to 3,000 kbps for a video that's 1280x720. Audio 44.1 khz sample rate and 96 kbps.

This will keep your presentation file size healthy so that your system doesn't have to deal with tons of different files. I have a client who shared that while Powerpoint is supposed to be able to handle spreadsheets, things have gone haywire and he never does it anymore.

I also use QuickTime Pro to trim videos to what I need in the presentation. If I'm drawing from a 30 minute video, then I'll trim most of it off just to get the 10 seconds that I need. Now the overall file size is significantly smaller.

Lastly, I'm breaking up my presentation into parts, so that it won't be approx 150 slides, but instead 3 or 4 smaller chunks.

Those are a few tricks of the trade that can be applied as preventative measures. And of course----BACKUPS!!! No system is fullproof. I really became complacent.

Best of luck to you!

AReyesJKD,

Good advice.

My problems began with 75 slides but I had a 4 minute QuickTime movie. When I moved to PowerPoint, I still split the presentation into two separate ones just in case.

Yes, PowerPoint 2011 jazzed up the transitions. Most of the Keynote transitions will convert to PowerPoint now (where with PowerPoint 2009 they were lost). There are a few other advantages to PowerPoint 2011, so when Keynote failed me, this was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

I am astonished, it's an YEARS OLD critical bug and Apple still didn't do anything to fix it.
Can't say how sc ewed and p ssed off I am now.

Can't even go back and read 3 years of post to look for a workaround..!

Just email the file to yourself and open it on the computer you need to use it on. It works every time for me.

Just did it by using Mail.app and GMail.

Saved the self-sent attachment (which is - somehow - a .key.zip) and tried to open it with Keynote: file not supported.
Renamed just to .key: can't open the file.
Any suggestion?
Already uninstalled iWork and every plist and cache on the disk, next step would be formatting and I'm really sure it won't solve anything either.. 😟

The thing is likely that your .key file is damaged.

The Key file is indeed a zip file structure of all the elements in your presentation.

Included in this is an XML file that is the manifest, i.e. a list of all the files and resources in the presentation.

If this gets lost or destroyed, you're effectivley scr**wd.

Some folk have fixed things with the email trick but I never did.

I suspect there's two types of problem here one where the file is just "damaged" in some way and some where the file is deleted.

Mine was the latter..... two solid days to put it all back together.

I pretty much user Office 2011, PowerPoint 2011 etc. every time now.

If I need a keynote pub so that I can run it on the iPad, PP first then import it into Keynote.

I'd share your idea if it weren't for one disturbing fact: sometimes Keynote opens the file, sometimes it does not. Well, it's more like ten "no" and one "yay!".

For example.. now I have the file open! I am trying to copy it, slide by slide, in a new file, hoping it will matter..

I admit that I'm no Apple expert, but this is the solution I stumpled on at 4AM about a year ago when I encounterd the problem. I emailed the Keynote file from the computer (my desktop) on which the file resides to the computer (MacBook Air) on which I desire the file to reside. I use Apple Mail 4.6 for this task. The file has a .key extension. I am a teacher and I use Keynote for my lectures. I've transferred dozens of files using this method over the last year, and I've never had a single problem. While I have not yet encounterd such an issue, the only drawback (besides Apple being too stupid to fix this bug in the first place) is that a file may be too large to email, requiring it be sent in parts.

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your answer.

I tried your method but, unfortunately for me, it does not work.

Keynote keeps on opening the file once out of 20 times, without any logic.

I uninstalled it and reinstalled it again, fixed permissions.. even re-formatted the whole disk and re-installed fresh copies of Lion and Keynote from the AppStore: nothing worked yet.

But I really thank you for sharing your workaround, I hope it will be of some use to someone 🙂

Maurizio

P.S. Any other suggestion is really appreciated. The only red string I noticed is that my less-than-1MB Keynote file contains slides with vectorial elements and someone said something about Keynote having problem handling text with outlines. But it didn't help me to troubleshoot my issue.. still don't know what to do or look for.

Hello everyone,

I had the same problem and phone with a very nice guy from the Apple help desk. He couldn't help me but pointed me to the iCloud and now I have figured out a workaround:

• Open the corrupt file in Keynote for iPad *
• Upload the opened file to iCloud
• Download the file as Powerpoint ppt
• Open it in Keynote

Voilà!

* I don't know if the first step is necessary and I don't have the time to test ist.

Cheers

Philipp

Ok, I have a fix for this.

This issue presented itself after i duplicated a keynote presentation in Finder, renamed it, opened it, worked on it and saved. On trying to reopen it i got the dreaded error 'Not a valid keynote document'

I am using Keynote 9 v 5.0 on Mountain Lion

Interestingly my collegue on Lion could open the document and save a duplicate. I was then also able to open this file but after saving and closing the problem resurfaced.

this fix solved everything:

http://www.tuaw.com/2012/08/07/invalid-keynote-document-calm-down-and-try-this-f ix/

Cheers

Sam

Sam,

I tried that fix. Didn't work for me.

Luckily, I had TimeMachine to find a older copy that would open, then spent all night recreating what I had lost.

Grrrrr killer!

out of interest, at what point did the fix fail? did you get the folder of images etc...