Make Keynote presentation Read Only?

There's always the option of right-clicking on the file, doing "Get Info" and checking the "Locked" button. If they unclick it, then the file will be editable again, but just put a reminder "Don't Unlock this File" in the Spotlight comments 🙂

If you lock the file, they won't be able to Save it...but they WILL be able to Save As... For that matter, I would be completely shocked and surprised if there wasn't a tool out there for ripping a PowerPoint presentation out of one of these "movie" files. In this case, the "read-only" only makes it more difficult to rip off, not impossible, so that's probably the only solution you'll have available to you.

Hmm, here's one I haven't tried but might be worth giving a go. Create a Keynote presentation that launches a second Keynote presentation and make the second one invisible on a .dmg. The question being, would the first one be able to find the invisible one?

This way, the only thing they could easily drag off the .dmg would be the visible one. Like I said, don't know if it would work AND it's still defeatable but the only REAL way to protect your content is not to share it! 🙂

Create a Keynote presentation that launches a second Keynote presentation and make the second one invisible on a .dmg. The question being, would the first one be able to find the invisible one?

As far as I can determine, paths to external files are hardcoded, and so you wouldn't be able to move this arrangement to a CD or other disk, because the path wouldn't be correct.

What I mean is to put the presentation on the dmg, create a second file (save IT to the dmg) that has a hyperlink to the first file. Do all this before you lock it.

I thought of this because recently, I created a dmg with a background image (put an image on a disk, have that image set as the background for the disk then make the file invisible). However, since the file is invisible to the Finder, it may not be able to connect the two because of that.

I just tried it and what do you know, it works! That's what I like about OSX, if you think something should work, give it a try! LOL!

I put the results at

http://idisk.mac.com/makentosh-Public

the name of the file is

unodosro.dmg

When you download it and mount it, you will only see one presentation on the disk. When you start that one and run it, there will be a link to start presentation 2. Of course, now they can just save THAT one LOL! But still, it was a fun exercise.

I, too, have this problem. I have created a Keynote (2.0.2) file (about 44 MB) that has three or four QuickTime A/V files (mostly created in iMovie HD and exported as MOV which play in the window of a few different slides) and about 100 image files (mainly JPEG and TIFF with a couple PDF). It works fine.

I'd like to let a few others have the presentation, but I don't want them to be able to see or export the Package Contents. I've tried exporting it as QuickTime, but even with using several different compression options (making it as small as 18 MB and as large as 2.8 GB!) it just doesn't look as good or work as easily as native Keynote.

So, there's no way to password protect a keynote file? Bummer.

Try doing this:

Select presentation
File print
select save as pdf
This will create a pdf version of your keynote which is read only

Hope this helps. Let me know how you got on.

How about export to Quicktime?

You can set this to run as a movie. It will stop editing of your Keynote file. It seems to me that this is very similar to the pps files you mention. The transitions and builds are maintained. The main thing you lose is the flexibility in the timings of the builds.

Care needed to avoid huge files though.

Export as pdf. Using Acrobat Reader in Full screen mode allows viewers to click through your slides. No builds or transitions though.

If you have Acrobat you can set the document security properties to stop editing (and even printing).

None of these are 'crack' proof, but they do make it a little harder for the casual opportunist.

David