Can't open Keynote 09 file

It appears that changing the setting to save Keynote files as a package has fixed he problem. I will keep my fingers crossed, but so far it appears to have helped.

I just notice this error on some of our keynote files that whenever we opened it this error just pop up "The document cannot be opened and its not a valid keynote" I'm totally freak out that wi wil not be able to open anymore all our keynote file.

We are suing keynote09(5.0) and all our files are upgraded from version 06. What action should I take now? Does anyone recommend on upgrading to 5.0.1? Has 5.0.1 fixed this issue?

I have this on the console logs when that error +document is not valid+ comes up


Keynote[61185]: Couldn't get a copy of a URL-flavored data from the pasteboard.
Keynote[61185]: Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
*[0x0-0x34a34a].com.apple.iWork.Keynote[61185]: Not the Finder!*
*[0x0-0x34a34a].com.apple.iWork.Keynote[61185]: Not the Finder!*

notice the bold letters! on the log. It seems like the keynote .plist were gone

Upgrading to the latest version of Keynote will not recover your files that have been corrupted. If I were you though, I would use the latest version on the chance that it narrows the window of occurrence for this problem.

There are two suggestions for avoiding this problem, or at least minimizing the impact.

The first is to save your files as packages. It may avoid the problem and it will at least give you visibility to when the problem occurs so you don't get blindsided.

The second is to quit out of Keynote and relaunch it every time you save your files. This won't do anything to avoid the problem, but it will minimize how many backups get corrupted because you'll detect the problem sooner.

Sound like a hassle? You bet. That's why I'm back to PowerPoint until I know this problem has been resolved.

I am baffled to discover this thread, after suffering from the equally inacceptable *Sudden Reboot* bug which still affects Keynote 09 (see
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9763806#9763806 )

This is too much: I'm out, back to Latex beamer for scientific presentations, or OpenOffice for PowerPoint like stuff, with vector image support!

Unbelievable! This has been going on since FEBRUARY? I have had the same thing happen, and I have renamed with .zip, I've tried to open in previous versions, I've tried everything, and nothing is working. This file happens to have about 60 hours of work in it. Can't view with QuickLook. Ready to shoot myself in the head.

iWork '09 Update 2 just appeared in Software Update, and the release notes refer to fixing issues when saving iWork documents, and playing some presentations more than once per Keynote session. Don't know if this will fix the problems some people have been having with corrupt Keynote files.

There are 2 other things I would add to this:
1. If you have a file that Keynote is no longer able to open as a result of this corruption issue, there is almost certainly nothing you will be able to do to recover it.
2. Changing the preference in Keynote so that it saves new files as packages seems to mitigate/solve the problem.

I had the same problem not being able to open the file. I simply changed the extension from .key to .zip, and then double clicked on the .zip file, which decompressed it into a .key file that I was able to open.

I'm running Mac OSX 10.6.1 and KeyNote 5.0.2

Hi everybody. same problem here. 3 weeks of hard work on a keynote file, and now "can't open file"... Thanks to time machine, I could restore a copy created 3 days ago, but now what shall we do? go back to KN08? PWPNT? Bad marks, Apple...

I have tried to zip and unzip the file, but I now have only the pictures and the thumbnails. Better than nothing, anyway. Thanks.

For the record:

This bug is still present in Keynote 5.0.3 (791). I have also saved a keynote presentation, only to find out that it had become corrupted. After reading this forum, I unzipped the keynote presentation and found out that it is indeed the index.apxl.gz that is missing. The thumbnails are unfortunately to small to be able to read the text, so I'm left with recreating the entire presentation.
I did notice a strange behaviour in Keynote/MathType when I last worked on the presentation. After having inserted about 5 equations with MathType, all subsequent equations weren't properly sent to Keynote when I closed MathType. Instead, they were placed into Keynote as empty, transparent grey blocks of one character wide (as if it was a selected empty white box).

I checked the checkbox 'Save new documents as packages', so I can at least check if the presentation is still there when I quit keynote. Which makes me wonder, would it be possible to configure Keynote to run an Applescript when a presentation is closed? The script would check the saved presentation and see if the most important files are there and prevent the presentation from closing if, for example, index.apxl is missing.

Regards,
Jelle Fresen

Message was edited by: Jelle Fresen

I had a great many hours of work lost - so I thought : file opened with progress bar stopping at one third. Than app froze (no force quit indication though). Than read this thread, which was not reassuring.
Tried earlier version of the document (through time machine), no luck. Had not saved incremental versions (banging head against wall!)
Than I noticed that many people mentioned video here in the thread as an important component of their presentation. I had put my video in a seperate folder. I recovered said folder on my desktop from timemachine; reopened the presentation: tada. Worked again.
I saved the file again, this time ticking "Copy audio and video into document" under preferences. It was unticked by default.
Now workes again as advertised. Maybe unrelated to problems mentioned here; but first time I ran into this kind of trouble since early mac days and day 1 with keynote. Might help someone?
Migth a lost 'link' to some video or audio source cause the trouble?
TL out

Similar experience here. After unzipping the .key file, I still have the index.apxl file (all is not lost!?). But upon opening the file in keynote, i see the following in the console:

2009-11-13 14:38:01 [0x0-0x48048].com.apple.iWork.Keynote[1390] Entity: line 2: parser error : invalid character in attribute value
2009-11-13 14:38:01 [0x0-0x48048].com.apple.iWork.Keynote[1390] "230"/><sf:data sfa:ID="SFEData-142" sf:path="Les s&#xE9;quences des sondes sont
2009-11-13 14:38:01 [0x0-0x48048].com.apple.iWork.Keynote[1390] ^
2009-11-13 14:38:01 [0x0-0x48048].com.apple.iWork.Keynote[1390] Entity: line 2: parser error : Opening and ending tag mismatch: drawables line 0 and layer
2009-11-13 14:38:01 [0x0-0x48048].com.apple.iWork.Keynote[1390] tent></sf:media></sf:drawables><sf:guides sfa:ID="NSMutableSet-145"/></sf:layer>
2009-11-13 14:38:01 [0x0-0x48048].com.apple.iWork.Keynote[1390] ^
...
2009-11-13 14:38:01 Keynote[1390] xmlParseChunk() error 76: Opening and ending tag mismatch: page line 0 and slide
2009-11-13 14:38:01 Keynote[1390] Failed to parse XML from input stream. Unexpected exception: xmlParseChunk() failed: 76
2009-11-13 14:38:01 Keynote[1390] Failed to create xml unarchiver.

Any idea on how to fix those?

Unbelievable. My agency has worked on this presentation for a collective 100+ hours. It was complex and beautiful. We practiced it and saved religiously. Now it won't open?! I am not "okay," as the button makes me choose, about this message: "Unable to open "file.key" because it isn't a valid keynote document." Does Apple realize the amount of money that is in jeopardy over this problem?!

I am an Apple expert. I know more than the Store's "Geniuses" on any question I have encountered. I run our company IT and an army of my Mac converts as well. I am up to date on everything. ***?!!!

This bug has been open for almost a year?! ***?!!!

I cannot describe how angry I am at this loss. This "brand advocate" is about to bust out an anti-apple tirade all over these Interwebs if this isn't addressed asap!

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!

Based on a previous poster's advice about the index.apxl file, I was able to get back a previously saved version. I don't know if this will help anyone, but here's what I did.

Using Terminal, I did the following:

cd (to the folder the corrupted file is in)
ls -al

I noticed that there were multiple invisible com.apple.iWork.Keynote_* folders that contained a previous version of the Keynote file. They are probably remnants left over from a bad save routine. Still using Terminal, I did the following:

cd com.apple.iWork.Keynote_?????? (choose the invisible folder with the latest date)
cp * ~/Desktop (to copy the contents to the desktop)

I then checked the presence of the index.apxl file by renaming the file with a .zip extension and double-clicking to decompress. Sure enough, inside the decompressed folder, the index.apxl was there. I was able to open this older version of the file and at least not lose everything.