How do I 'paste and match style' slides between presentations?

Question

Level 1

42 points

How do I 'paste and match style' slides between presentations?

Once upon a time, before Keynote was dumbed down, you could easily cut and paste slides between presentations with the source slide adopting the page style of the target presentation's theme. Alas, no longer...

Now, each time you paste a single slide into an existing presentation, it carries its own theme style with it, even if the target presentation has exactly the same style name. We have 4 sub-brands in our business, each with 3 slide formats: regular, widescreen and report format. That's 12 themes. In each case, we have the exact same page styles: front cover, end cover, single column, blank with logo, etc.

So now for every page I paste, I need to delete the accompanying page style and manually replace it with the target theme's corresponding page style. Fortunately, you do it only once per style but it could still mean manually updating 10 styles each time you import specific slides from 2-3 other presentations.

There's got to be a better way. Gotta be. Is there? ... 😕

Posted on Oct 24, 2016 3:41 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 25, 2016 9:09 AM in response to Moscool

Moscool wrote:

Gary, you tease! I was genuinely excited, but sadly it doesn't work...

- Created fresh source & target presentations to be on the safe side

- Both presentations had the same style Masters names

- Differences were size (wide v normal), title colour, logos

- Dragging simply adapted the imported slides to the widescreen format, everything else remained the same

- 'Reapply master to slide' only resulted in local changes/minor formatting that had been carried out on individual slides but didn't reapply the master of the target presentation

So I'm still stuck... 😉

One of the important features in Keynote is the ability to use multiple themes and multiple slide masters within a single presentation. This works in Keynote versions; 7.0, 6.5 to 6.6.2 and also 5.3

Can you confirm what specific version of Keynote you are using and version of Mac OS?

Also try this most basic of test:

close then open Keynote
select the white theme from the chooser
click the add new slide button in the toolbar and choose the blank master
change the colour of the background to a distinctive colour
start a new presentation File > New
select the white theme from the chooser
click the add new slide button in the toolbar and choose the blank master
change the colour of the background to a distinctive colour different from the first
Drag and drop the slide from the Navigator of the first presentation, onto the Navigator of the second presentation.

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Answer 2

Moscool Author

Level 1

42 points

Oct 28, 2016 1:48 AM in response to Moscool

Found my own solution! 😎

A bit cumbersome but faster than manually deleting masters after import! Here we go:

- Lets say that Target presentation uses Theme NEW and copied slides use Theme OLD.

- Open the source presentation (old)

- Save a copy as (temporary name)

- Change the theme from OLD to NEW using the theme chooser (file/change theme...)

- Open the target presentation, both presentations now share the same NEW theme. Copy and paste slides to your heart’s content!

- Give all slides a once over, applying the ‘format/reapply master to slide’ command and then make local modifications as needed

- Throw away the temporary copy of the old (source) file. If you are more of a risk taker, don't rename in the first place simply discard the changes when closing the source file...

- Bob's your uncle

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Answer 3

Oct 28, 2016 10:09 AM in response to Moscool

I just can't get my head around why anyone would want this to be different

Why oh why? 😢

This issue just does not happen on any machine we have access to, thats eight Mac OS versions using either Keynote 5, 6 or 7.

This a local issue to your system: therfore perform this re-set procedure for Keynote in the order listed below:

uninstall Keynote you must use an application removal tool for this procedure to work

Appcleaner is free and works well for this procedure, it can be download from here: Appcleaner

empty the trash
shut Down the Mac (Apple menu > Shut Down)
restart the Mac normally, (Apple > Restart)
install Keynote from the Mac App Store

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Answer 4

Oct 25, 2016 5:37 AM in response to Moscool

Do not use copy and paste, instead Drag and drop the slide from the Navigator of the first presentation, onto the Navigator of the second presentation.

The Navigator is the side panel to the left of the slide canvas.

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Answer 5

Moscool Author

Level 1

42 points

Oct 25, 2016 6:22 AM in response to Gary Scotland

Gary, you tease! I was genuinely excited, but sadly it doesn't work...

- Created fresh source & target presentations to be on the safe side

- Both presentations had the same style Masters names

- Differences were size (wide v normal), title colour, logos

- Dragging simply adapted the imported slides to the widescreen format, everything else remained the same

- 'Reapply master to slide' only resulted in local changes/minor formatting that had been carried out on individual slides but didn't reapply the master of the target presentation

So I'm still stuck... 😉

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Answer 6

Moscool Author

Level 1

42 points

Oct 27, 2016 6:27 AM in response to Gary Scotland

Hi Gary

Thanks for your help. Still not working. Followed your instructions and even tried both the modified slide and the modified master approaches. As in my other presentations, the master travels with the originating slide and can only be over-riden manually by removing the originating master and replacing it with the target master.

I just can't get my head around why anyone would want this to be different or at least provide the possibility to apply the target master quickly and easily. Microsoft has been doing it for ever and Keynote used to do it. Why oh why? 😢

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