AppleScript or Automator Workflow for Bulk-Converting Powerpoint Presentations to Keynote

applescriptautomatorkeynote

I have a large set of Powerpoint presentations that I would like to convert to Keynote. I can convert each one manually by following these steps:

In Finder, right-click Powerpoint document and select Open With… -> Keynote
In Keynote, choose Save As…, check the Save copy as checkbox, select iWork '08 as the format, and click OK.

However, doing this for each document is tedious. I'd like a way to convert them all at once.

I've been trying to create an Automator workflow for this, but have been completely unsuccessful. (I think being a programmer actually makes it impossible to understand the for-the-rest-of-us tools like Automator and AppleScript.) Can anyone help me out?

Best Answer

I couldn't figure out how to get Automator to do it, but I was able to beat AppleScript into submission. Just save the following as an Application in the AppleScript Editor, then drag the files you want to convert onto the icon. It will prompt you to choose a folder where the converted files will be placed.

on open droppedFiles
    set theDestinationFolder to (choose folder with prompt "Choose destination folder") as Unicode text
    repeat with theFile in droppedFiles
        tell application "Keynote"
            open theFile
            set theSlideshow to slideshow 1
            set theDestinationPath to theDestinationFolder & (name of theSlideshow)
            save theSlideshow in theDestinationPath
            close theSlideshow
        end tell
    end repeat
end open

(I don't really know what I'm doing with AppleScript. If there are improvements that can be made here, I'd like to know about them.)

Related Solutions

MacOS – Automator or AppleScript Rename Workflow

Here's a script:

set thefolder to "path:to:folder" as alias
tell application "Finder"
    set filename to name of first item of folder thefolder
    set oldDels to AppleScript's text item delimiters as string
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "." as string
    set itemname to first text item of filename
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDels as string
    set name of thefolder to itemname
end tell

It gets the name of the first item in the folder, clips off the extension, and renames the folder.

Note that it doesn't convert to uppercase as in your example. This is less than trivial with AppleScript, but let me know if it's real important and I can give you the code.

How to generate dynamic keynote presentations

You could create your keynote presentation as a series of separate files (either slides, or sections, eg. slides 1-20, slides 21-25, slides 26-40) and then merging them using Automator. This way you could simply replace slides 21-25 with alternative versions prior to merging?

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Automator or AppleScript Rename Workflow

How to generate dynamic keynote presentations

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