Is there any way to customize the size of windows in the presenter display?

I verified that it's showing v6.2. Went through all the menus and preferences. The popup in presenter view still only has the options to select which panel displays but I can't find anyone to customize.

The deal-breaker for me is whether you can customise the Presenter Display or not. Many of us enlarge the Presenter notes field in the Presenter Display to take up the majority of available space on the laptop while the projector projects the show. This allows us to have our notes in a large font size to be visible from 15 feet and there is no need to go up to the laptop and scroll through those notes. I also have the current slide and the next slide showing, with both as small as Keynote allows.

In Keynote 09, you did this by going to Preferences in the Keynote menu, selecting the Presenter Display icon and clicking on the Customize Presenter Display button. This takes you into Presenter mode if you have a second screen or projector hooked up. Once there, you could drag the Notes field to fill most of the screen, select what you wanted to show (next or current slide or clock etc). Since I never upgraded I don't know whether that method changed in v6, so getting into it may have been moved.

Could you, or anyone who is running this new 6.2 tell us if this is now possible.

Also, while I 'm here, another big missing feature in v6 was the ability to customise the Toolbar - anyone know if that's been fixed in 6.2?

Dick,

Two things:

1) If you want to see if Keynote 6 will work for you, you should download it yourself and find out. It doesn't wipe out Keynote 5.x. It is a separate install. I have both installed on my Macs. I would recommend making a copy of a file before opening it in the new version of Keynote so you don't accidentally save your old presentations in a new format that the old Keynote won't open.

2) The presenter display use case you are describing is very similar to my own. I give very long lectures (four hours), so my notes are crucial. You absolutely cannot do what you're describing. It *****. I hate it. But Apple clearly doesn't see this as a priority, or even an issue.

I'm with you--did the identical thing. I've been using the new version for creating and the old version for presenting.

Dave

I know that's possible, but I scan this forum often and there is too much reported stuff missing (and or flawed) from 6.0 for me - too many people report on difficulties. Keynote 09 is brilliant and does everything I need. Having to remember to make a copy of a file before I open it is just not going to happen for me (I'm still struggling with the loss of SaveAs!) and not being able to customise the toolbar will just slow me down too much. So I'm not going to v6 until i know for sure these things are fixed!!

However, Apple did promise they would fix Presenter Display, so I'm keen to know whether they did in 6.2 released two days ago. You only mention v6 - any chance you could upgrade to 6.2 and let this forum know if it's been fixed?

presenter's display is definitely not customizable in 6.2

Ah well! I was getting all excited. Hopes now dashed. No point going over the ground already covered in this post. All we can do is to continue to make as much noise as possible and point this out on all Review sites, in the hope Apple might notice . . . I continue to hope, but see my earlier post in this thread about hubris!

Forgot one thing. Apple claims 'Improved Presenter Display Layouts and Labels' in 6.2. What exactly have they improved?

Dick,

The toolbar is customizable as it was in Keynote '09 - right click on the toolbar and the contextual menu includes the option 'Customize Toolbar' and then tool can be dragged in/out. I believe this was brought back in with the last update. Still no way to arrange the presenter display, as others have verified, as far as I can tell.

Once upon a time there was a great man called Steve. Steve and his friend Woz started an amazing company, which tried to make the best products it could.

Now, Steve was a man who loved being on stage. He loved to present, and he was a truly amazing at it. He practiced for days before a performance, and like everything else he did, he tried to make his presentations the best he could.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town there was a man called Bill. Bill’s company was very successful and made a piece of software they called Powerpoint. Powerpoint was not exciting, Powerpoint was not flash. But, Powerpoint was really good and lots of people used it.

So Steve got his guys to make a software product to rival Powerpoint. At first it was okay, it did the job, but it really wasn’t a patch on Powerpoint. So they worked and they worked and they worked on it, until it too was really good.

You remember that Steve loved making presentations, and so he paid a lot of attention to the new software programme and they named it Keynote. Keynote was the best. Keynote was amazing. Keynote was much better than Powerpoint.

And then sadly, Steve died.

A little while later, without paying attention to their clients, the company decided to change Keynote and when they did they removed the thing that mattered the most - the thing that made it different, the reason it was so much better than the package Bill’s company made - the ability to customise the presenter screen.

For a lot of people this change doesn’t matter much, intact they might not even notice: but to professional presenters it’s everything. For these people, making this change has killed a magnificent thing. The software is not as flexible as it was. It is not as clever as it was, and many people are pretty unhappy about it.

For a person who presents for a living (myself included) this is more than a shame, and its got me looking at the rival software again, and looking to make a change.

The End.

I can only second what others have said above, shaking my head sadly. They keep adding unnecessary eye candy to Keynote, while failing to do anything about (at least) two pointless and destructive changes introduced in version 6: the impossibility of customizing Presenter Notes (thus making Keynote 6.x) unusable for presentations with any significant quantity of notes), and eliminating animations on Master Slides (thus forcing you to make identical, repetitive additions to lots of slides instead of setting transitions, etc. once for a presentation). No explanation of why they removed these very useful features in the first place, and no sign they're ever going to correct the problems they produced. They have really come close to making PowerPoint a serious alternative.

BUT WAIT... THERE'S MORE!!

As well as not being able to fully customise presenter display options, you can't fully customise the edit windows.

One used to be able to zoom the slides down to 25% (less if you used Fit In Window) and then expand the presenter notes window all the way up to virtually full screen size. This was particularly handy when writing and editing full page presenter notes.

Now, the presenter notes only expand about a third of the way up; which means when editing notes, you are constantly using the scroll bars. That's another backward step.

I'm really looking forward to using v6. But not until it's at parity with v5.

Me too.

And it keeps me from buying a new Mac, since I am uneasy about trying to run Keynote 5.3 on Mavericks.

Bummer.