iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Note to Self: Add a Comment

Keynote doesn’t offer the same kind of detailed change-tracking that you’ll find in Pages, but it does let you add sticky-note comments to your slides—a quick way to leave yourself reminders or let colleagues suggest changes for your presentation. One useful way to use comments, for example, is to slap them on your slides after doing a first-pass run-through of your presentation (see The first run-through)—quick, casual notes to capture your first impressions of where changes need to be made: “Needs better transition,” “Got lost here,” “Where are the stats?” and so on.

To add a comment to a slide, click the toolbar’s Comment button or choose Insert → Comment. Keynote adds a yellow sticky note on top of your slide (Figure 13-20). Type your suggestion, reminder, or hare-brained idea, and Keynote scrawls it onto the comment in the Mac’s handwritten-ish Marker Felt font.

Tip

Not a fan of yellow sticky notes? Change a comment’s color by clicking the comment and choosing a new fill color from the Format Bar or Graphic Inspector.

Figure 13-20. Add a comment to a slide, and Keynote slaps it with a yellow sticky-note for a quick visual reminder or suggestion for changes. Drag the note to position it anywhere on the slide canvas, and resize it with the resize handle in the note’s bottom-right corner. You can format your comment text just as you would edit a text box, ...