Can't open Keynote 09 file

Thank you very much, Roadpizza, it worked perfectly! A couple of embedded images which I copied/pasted from the Illustrator had corrupted names in my .key folder. Other clippings were fine, cannot blame anyone other than Apple. What is taking Apple so long to fix? This is brand/brain damaging. Cannot rely on Apple products? If not Roadpizza, it'd be a black Monday.

Same issues here.

Causing me no end of grief as I pushed the company to switch from Powerpoint to Keynote. Now I look like an ***.

Saved .key files seems to be randomly getting corrupted. I am unable to reproduce the error. Some people seem to be having more problems than others.

Here's the error message –

*"The document “filename.key” could not be read. The document does not have a valid format."*

All the machines in the company have the very latest version of Keynote '09. If it's makes any difference all the machines are not on the same operating system but I haven't been able to correlate this to the likelihood of a corrupt file.

Initially I thought it may be to do with the customer theme I create for the company but I soon realised it happens with any theme.

The presentations is question were all of varying sizes, some only a few text slides long, with one image.

We do normally open and save files off a shared file server (running 10.3) and have never had a issue. Our normal workflow includes Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Word, Powerpoint etc. Recently I've been instructing people to work locally when dealing with Keynote. This has not stopped the occurrences of lost .key presentations.

Apple, what's the story?

Dear Freaked-Out Keynote Users and Mac Friends,

I had the same problem the night before a BIG presentation--Keynote file would not open at all after closing it! Used these comments to rebuild in Keynote 08 until 2 AM! I asked my recent contact with an Apple executive in Asia about this and his Singapore office solved it!!!!!! Here it is:

"We still don't know what went wrong but we got the file back by:

1- Adding .zip to the name of the file
2- Double clicking that file
3- Opening the resulting file

We'll keep investigating but here's the file. We also cannot guarantee that he can fix the file in the future using this method."

TRY IT--IT WORKS!!! Be sure you add the .zip AFTER the .key = .key.zip ending (do not just replace .key with .zip). This changes the file to a zip file and it opens by unzipping!!! Go figure.

Bill

Bill,

I just sent an ANSWERED reply/response. It works!!!

Bill Dresselhaus

I had the same problem. I believe it was caused by filenames with diacritical marks. Keynote changes the filenames when it places the documents in its package and it can’t find them on opening, which may result in the ‘Unable to open’ message. The zip tricks lets you open it again, but the links are lost.

So make sure you use web-safe filenames for imported files.

Beware: if you paste an AI or PDF in Keynote it creates a filename itself, possibly with diacritical marks when they are in the text!

How do you remove the duplicates? I'm in a royal bind so I hope you are online!

Thanks!

I've tried EVERYTHING in this thread, and got NOWHERE. I need this presentation back!

I can open the package and see it contents no problem, but it's useless at that point, doesnt help me. I renamed, zipped unzipped renamed, did the cache delete w/ safe boot then reboot, reinstalled iwork 09.... the worst part is that it was my FIRST time using iwork, and the first file i save with it is already f *ed. NOT impressed... thanks for wasting my time apple.

someone help please!

Great news.... Applecare is closed for the next 5 days, so no help from them.

Holy crap I am screwed please help!

Krill's method of changing it to a .zip file, unzipping it, and then changing the folder to .key (copied below) worked for me! MANY THANKS!!!!

1. Don't mess with original files - make a copy. Just in case.
2. You rename your broken FILENAME.key to FILENAME.zip. Finder will ask you whether you're sure enough on renaming the file.
3. Unzip the FILENAME.zip into separate folder to get folder named FILENAME.
4. You may spend some time exploring it - you will find all embedded pictures, videos and a PDF of your presentation inside, but all that is done just to clarify your curiosity without any practical reason.
5. Now you have to rename your folder FILENAME to FILENAME.key and here comes Finder again asking you. Do it. Your folder turns into the file FILENAME.key.
6. Now you can open it in Keynote, as if nothing happened.

I have found another way - the posted ways did not work for me.

Email me at stuart21 at mac.com & I will let you know how.

Stuart.

Just wanted to add that I am having the same issue ("Unable to open 'filename' because it isn't a valid keynote document") - with a minor twist - ever since upgrading to Keynote'09 a few weeks ago.

The issue takes the following form for me. I have a presentation that I work on in the office. At the end of the day, I sync office files with a portable hard drive (using File Synchronization software utility). Once home, I sync files from portable HD to home Macbook. So the series of transfers is:
Office Mac--> Poratble HD --> Home Macbook.

This newly-updated keynote file on the home Macbook refuses to open. However, the very same file on the external HD is perfectly fine and can be opened. So, of course, I manually transfer the file from the HD to the Macbook and now the file opens.

I haven't lost any files so far because of this, but it always gives me a heart attack as this issue sometimes pops up sometimes just before class.

This happens once every 3 or 4 days, not every time that I sync/update files.

I have used File Synchronization software flawlessly for several years, so I am not ready to blame that software for my issues.

I am having very similar problems, not being able to open a keynote file that I created on the same machine hours earlier. In addition, I often have problems saving a fresh keynote file.

epic fail! ... lost my presentation.

back to good old win+.ppt I guess, at least there fail is the general rule not the exception.

You can generally save your Keynote presentation. I provided an answer on an error message on this thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10845696&#10845696

Here it is again, in case you can't find it.

Looking at the crash dump file it appears to be fonts and cache. You can verify by opening the file using another account on your computer (or another computer). If the file opens it may be the fonts. Here are the steps I used:

1. Open Fontbook - validate fonts then remove duplicates.
2. Delete the com.apple.iWork.Keynote.plist file in Home/Library/Preferences & related cache files (Home/Library/Caches).
3. Shut down
4. Boot up holding down the shift key (safe reboot)
5. Shut down again (Re-initializes the font cache)
6. Run Keynote

Peace

I am afraid neither of the two methods described work for me.

The Keynote document in question is a 38 MB document (there are no linked files or images - I dragged each image into the keynote, and all the original images are also present where they were then). I created this presentation over a period of a couple of months (never had a problem during the process). I have rsync'ed and copied this presentation on to multiple machines (none of them had a problem opening it).

I made use of this presentation using this document only 2 weeks ago. Since then, it has been untouched. Now, I need to make another presentation tomorrow but it would not open (not valid file format).

1. I tried renaming it as zip (FILENAME.key -> FILENAME.zip). Tried to open it. It gave me an error: "Unable to unarchive "FILENAME.zip" into "FILENAME".(Error 1 - Operation not permitted.)" That is a dead end. Tried this on 10.5.5 and 10.6.2. No go.
2. I tried the other option (clearing font cache). No go either.

I do not have the time to recreate the presentation (though I have a PDF copy of it, I need to make some edits for the presentation tomorrow).

I have used Powerpoint and Openoffice Impress before this. Neither were as pretty or powerful as Keynote, but I have never had issues like this.

I first thought I was going crazy, but no, there are others with the same problem. I learned my lesson and will never use Keynote for anything critical or long presentations again.

But I need to recover this presentation. Please help !!!!

Message was edited by: MacSingh

Message was edited by: MacSingh