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Level 1

111 points

changing Presenter Notes font size, color, etc

So, I've been puzzled for the longest time how to change the Presenter Notes text / paragraph for all slides at one time.
I often import files from PPT and need to type notes during lectures. However, sometimes, the presenter notes text is white, and then I have to change each slide to black text as I move along the lecture.
Other times, I need to change the font type and line spacing.

Is there a way to change all presenter notes text/paragraph all at once?
If I select all slides, the option to change the Presenter Notes grays out.
And the option is not available if I select the master slides.
And, there is no option to 'make text the default' setting, as often enough this might be an expected menu item but I can't seem to see anything of similar nature.

I welcome all comments.
Regards. Radu

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Oct 25, 2010 9:43 AM

Best reply

Tural

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Sep 14, 2017 1:36 AM

Hi!

I'm using version 7.2. I discovered by chance that when you change any parameter in the section for the presenter notes, a blue "update" button appears on the top right section. Press that, and any changes you've made will apply to all presenter notes.

Hope this helps

View in context

36 replies

Feb 6, 2011 8:46 PM in response to Kelly Coull

Hi Kelly,

Finally had a chance to play around today. Had a little bit of luck on changing the font color, but I could only get a few colors to work, as long as the RGB value was either 0 or 255 - doesn't seem to stick to anything in between. So this is good if you like black, white, red, green or blue - and a few of the secondary combinations.

I'm not a programmer either, but I borrowed some XML from the rest of the file and just plugged it in. Here's what I did to get a black, 18 point Helvetica notes font:

<sf:fontName><sf:string sfa:string="Helvetica"/></sf:fontName><sf:fontColor><sf:color xsi:type="sfa:calibrated-rgb-color-type" sfa:r="0" sfa:g="0" sfa:b="0" sfa:a="1"/></sf:fontColor><sf:fontSize><sf:number sfa:number=“18” sfa:type="f"/></sf:fontSize>

Of course, it's the RGB values you can monkey with to get the other colors, but like I said, it seemed to only take 0 or 255 seriously.

Thanks again for the insight on how to do a bit of dissection...

Cheers,

Craig

Feb 7, 2011 6:15 AM in response to Craig Syverson

Nice, I should have thought to try RGB. I kept trying to just insert a number +(for example black would be 000000)+. I will try this and see if any other colors work for me.

Thanks

Nealf

Level 1

79 points

Feb 7, 2011 7:51 AM in response to Kelly Coull

Kelly,

What program are you using to view the keynote package content? When I right click (control click) my presentations, I do not get the option to show package contents.

By the way, thanks for the interesting post.

gbdoc

Level 2

356 points

Feb 7, 2011 8:02 AM in response to Nealf

You do that from the Finder.

Feb 7, 2011 8:14 AM in response to Nealf

As gbdoc said, you do this in the Finder. Right click the file icon and you should see the Show Package Content. If you don't, that means your Keynotes are not being saved as Packages +(you can change this in the Keynote Preferences)+. If they are not saved as a package, you can remove the .key extension from the file and replace it with .zip. Then double click and it will give you the folder that contains all the files. Add .key to the folder and your Keynote will be in the Package file type then.

Feb 7, 2011 1:40 PM in response to Kelly Coull

Okay, I got it. Did some more digging around (also used TextMate to help visually organize the XML better). Stole this color string - it worked. You can adjust the RGB values as a percentage as opposed to a set value. Seems to work for any color. The following example is what I'm using to get a nice dark gray at RGB 77, but it seems to be very flexible to put different values in each of the colors to get exactly what you want.

<sf:fontColor><sf:color xsi:type="sfa:calibrated-rgb-color-type" sfa:r="0.30196082592010498" sfa:g="0.30196082592010498" sfa:b="0.30196082592010498" sfa:a="1"/></sf:fontColor>

On a side note, and most regrettably, these changes do not get conveyed to the file when run on Keynote for iPad. Worse yet, the default font for Notes in Keynote for iPad looks like the dreaded Comic Sans. Our work is not yet done.

Feb 7, 2011 2:17 PM in response to Craig Syverson

Nice work Craig, thanks for sharing. As for the iPad problem, you are own your there as I still have not gotten one.

sch1764

Level 1

0 points

Feb 11, 2011 3:45 PM in response to Kelly Coull

To change the font size and type, don't you just go to Preferences - General - and then change the Outline View Font at the bottom to whatever? It worked for me fine. Preparing a lecture now - same font size (went to 22) everywhere - rehearse, working screen etc.

Gary_79

Level 1

0 points

Feb 12, 2011 10:52 AM in response to iRadu

Here is a quick fix.
Click anywhere in the presenter notes section of ppt to make it active.
Then hit (cmd +) to make text sixe bigger and (cmd -) to make size smaller.

Hope it helps 🙂

Feb 16, 2011 6:36 PM in response to Gary_79

You rock Gary_79!
Sometimes we can sure chase our tails looking for an answer that is right in front of us.

Sep 26, 2011 7:22 AM in response to Kelly Coull

Thank you, Kelly, for the excellent instructions. I didn't even know that there WAS such a thing as the Automator.

While this worked for extracting the notes from the presentation, it still galls me that this abilty to extract the notes isn't a built-in feature. I'm using Keynote '11. SURELY by now this would be a standard feature and folks wouldn't have to create an Automator script to accomplish the task. Don't you think? And that's not even addressing the font size bug that everyone is pointing to.

Thanks again.

Afsoon

Level 1

0 points

Oct 12, 2011 8:34 AM in response to iRadu

It's really easy to change the font size...

1. highlight the text in the notes section of any slide for the given powerpoint

2. press "command" + "+" to zoom in on the notes.

Not sure how to change the font or color.

Nealf

Level 1

79 points

Oct 14, 2011 3:43 AM in response to Afsoon

Afsoon,

Thanks for trying. However the question was how to change the font on all the notes for all of the slides at once.

Mar 11, 2012 12:35 PM in response to iRadu

For some time (I'm on Keynote '09, version 5.1.1, but this has worked for me for at least couple of years) I've been able to set the presenter notes default font by following these steps:

Start a new presentation
Open the master slides and make appropriate changes for your new theme
When done with the masters, create a single (non-master) slide
Position the cursor in the presenter notes area and set the font size, using cmd-T to open the font panel
Save as a new theme

Using this approach I now have several custom themes with a default presenter notes font of Lucida Grand 22 point. BUT... there's a probem...

It seems that Keynote has some kind of intermittent bug. Every now and then -- and I haven't figured out the pattern yet -- my presenter notes will revert to a default font. The default is, I believe Helvetica 12 point. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it seems that slides begin to revert to this Helvetica 12 point as I click on them. If I notice the problem, quit Keynote (without saving), and then reopen one of two things will have happened: Either some slides retain the presenter notes in my Lucida Grand 22 point font, and I have to fix the "corrupted" ones... or, more often, ALL presenter notes have reverted to Helvetica 12 point. Then I have to painfully go through each and every slide's notes, and change the font back.

It's insanely frustrating, especially when dealing with presentation that have 100+ slides and detailed notes. On more than one occasion I've migrated my slides to PowerPoint because I'm sick of this problem.

Has anyone run into this? Any ideas on how to fix it? Does Apple know or care about this problem? (I suspect they don't, because the bug has been in there for years)...

Mark Funk

Level 1

114 points

Apr 25, 2012 2:18 PM in response to Zacharias Beckman

Yes, this same thing has happened to me. Twice now, on a 172 slide presentation, the presenter notes have defaulted back to Helvetica 12 point after I went through each slide's notes to make them larger. This is a major pain.

changing Presenter Notes font size, color, etc