changing Presenter Notes font size, color, etc

Question

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

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

ThePathCondition

Level 1

4 points

Apr 5, 2015 5:55 AM in response to iRadu

In the latest Keynote, you can click on the presenter notes of any slide, and you should see on the right the "Presenter Notes" style currently applied to the text. If you don't see that, then you should make sure all presenter notes on slides first have the same base style applied.

Now you can change any style settings of the text (font, size, etc.), then apply them on all presenter notes by clicking on the style name, then on the right arrow next to the "Presenter Notes" entry in the dropdown menu, then selecting "Redefine from selection". Now all presenter notes should be the same new style.

Note that this operation will preserve any changes in the text to the base style (e.g., making some parts of the text bold).

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Answer 2

Tural

Level 1

4 points

Sep 14, 2017 1:36 AM in response to iRadu

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

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Answer 3

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)...

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Answer 4

nntx31

Level 1

4 points

Jan 9, 2011 4:41 PM in response to iRadu

I would be very interested to get an answer to this, too. I know this questions was posted years, ago, but I still can't figure out how to do it in keynote 9 (2011 update).

The best work around I have been able to find is to open the ppt in powerpoint, change the font color of the notes field on the master notes page (view menu-->master-->notes master) to an "apple" or "web-safe color", specifically FFFFFF for black, but this only applies to the "main" font used in the presentation. If the author of the slide show already changed some words to red, for example, they aren't effected by changing the master, and show up as yellow (hard to see) when opened in keynote.

This work-around is not only tedious--since I am a medical student, and ALL of our lectures are given in ppt form, which may be up to 20 lectures per week and sometime 150 slides each--but it often doesn't work, if the prof used an old version of ppt or created it in keynote and then exported it to ppt. In these and other cases, when I change the notes master, it doesn't actually do anything to the individual note page view of each slide...

SO, if someone can figure out how to change the FONT COLOR of PRESENTATION NOTES in ALL SLIDES of a presentation in KEYNOTE, PLEASE SHARE!!

Thanks!

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Answer 5

iedsri

Level 1

6 points

Jan 11, 2011 11:21 AM in response to nntx31

I have a very similar problem, which maybe you can solve. I use Keynote constantly in class. For years, every time I've added a text to a slide the text box has opened up in a default font I don't use and have to change. I can't figure out how to get Keynote to adapt to my preferred font and font-size.

Is there a way to get Keynote's text box to open up on every slide with the correct font and size already selected (i.e., with the default word "Text" already correctly formatted)?

I've tried changing the size and font in the "master slide", but it doesn't seem to make any difference -- even there, when I click on Text Box the new box comes right back up the same as always, with the wrong default.

???

Thanks.

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Answer 6

Jan 12, 2011 5:23 PM in response to Nealf

Hi Guys,

Happily, the answer is yes.

Create a Text Box as before, and reformat it to the font, size, color, etc. that you want. With the Text Box still selected go to Format > Advanced > Define Text for All Masters. This will solve your problem. Similar defaults can be set for other objects as well. In fact, if you're a fan of using Shapes to contain text, you'll need to go through the same procedure starting with a Shape and adding text inside of it.

These defaults will stick only to the current file you are working on. Next time you open a fresh document from that same Theme, the Apple defaults will reappear. The way I work around this is to start with a fresh Theme, change all the object defaults (as described above), toss out any unwanted Master Slides from that theme, maybe create some new Masters, and then save that blank document as a Custom Theme (File > Save Theme - use default location). Then for future presentations, I choose my custom theme from the Theme Chooser and all my preferences are already set.

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Answer 7

Jan 18, 2011 10:40 PM in response to DonniP

Hi Donn,

Yeah, I got carried away with the other question - I do not know of a way to change the default font for Presenter Notes, despite looking intently. The Notes formatting does not follow with the Masters, so creating a custom Theme is not a solution. The best workarounds I can offer are:

1. Duplicating slides from which you have changed the Notes formatting to your liking. This is okay if you're not a heavy user of different Masters

2. With a set of Notes that are already created, the ever-helpful Copy Style & Paste Style functions do (thankfully) work for the Notes text, so at least that can save a few steps, but each Note will have to be manually selected in order to apply the Paste Style.

3. Type your Notes as a regular Text object on any regular slide, assuming that you've adjusted the text fomenting to your liking, as described in my post above. Then Cut that text object and paste it in the Presenter Notes field. Keynote will keep the formatting of your copied text in the Notes box. This is all good unless your text is white, in which case it will be difficult to see!

4. A similar hack can work with the Comments, and might be more practical and natural from a workflow perspective. Create a new Comment and reformat the text to ANYTHING other than the default Marker Felt (okay, the usual embargo of Comic Sans always applies, too) and type the note content. Click on the Comment note - you won't have any handles appear to confirm your selection, but don't worry - choose Copy and then go to your next slide, click on the Canvas and choose Paste. This will copy the previous Comment along with the formatting. Click in the Notes field and choose Paste, and the formatted text from that Comment will appear.

If anyone has found a better hack, I'd love to know about it, too...

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Answer 8

gbdoc

Level 2

357 points

Jan 21, 2011 7:45 AM in response to tachi

Welcome to the forum!

But tachi, when I do what you suggest, the font is changed for all the text on all the slides, +but not+ in the presenter notes text. Either I don't understand your directions, or, perhaps, you misunderstood the assignment. Please help me out. 😟

(I sent this feature request to Apple, and got no response.)

Edit: I'm pretty sure this could be done automatically with AppleScript or Automator, but I'm no expert in either, so I've never tried it.

Message was edited by: gbdoc

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Answer 9

Jan 21, 2011 11:10 AM in response to gbdoc

While I am also no expert in either here is all I could find for Automator.

This will extract all presenter notes to a text edit document. You can then format them as you wish, but then you have to go back in and manually copy them to each slide.

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Answer 10

Jan 21, 2011 11:49 AM in response to Kelly Coull

So after looking into it a little more I have found an answer for part of the question. This will let you change font and font size, but not font color.

Before I get into it, I must start with my disclaimer. I am not a computer programmer and while guessing how to do this I broke a couple test Keynotes. If you attempt this on a valuable presentation, I highly recommend making a copy or backup of your original before trying this.

Alright, now that that is out of the way, here we go. Right click +(control click)+ your presentation and select +Show Package Content+, you will see a file titled index.apxl.gz. Double click this to unzip giving you a new file index.apxl. Trash the index.apxl.gz and double click the index.apxl which will open in text edit. Then search for slideNote. Below you will see what to change to change the presenter notes size and font.

At least in my few tests, this changed the font and font size on all presenter notes through the presentation.

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Answer 11

Jan 25, 2011 6:36 AM in response to Craig Syverson

I still have not found how to change the font color. I did not see it listed and tried a couple time to add it and ended up with a +Could not open file+ when I tried to open the Keynote. It seems like there should be a way, but I haven't found it yet.

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Answer 12

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

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Answer 13

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.

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Answer 14

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.

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Answer 15

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.

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