Macs All-in-One for Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Chapter VI.2. Presenting with Keynote

In This Chapter

• Creating a presentation

• Adding and deleting slides

• Manipulating text

• Working with graphics

• Modifying pictures and movies

• Using transitions and effects

• Giving a presentation

If you need to inform or convince a group of people about a subject, you often need to make a presentation. Although you could give a presentation just by talking, sometimes it's hard to emphasize certain points and ideas through words alone. That's why you need the presentation program Keynote.

Keynote can take the hassle out of creating, organizing, and giving a presentation so you can concentrate more of your time on talking to an audience and less of your time fumbling around with jammed slide projectors, whiteboards, and felt markers that stain your fingertips.

Best of all, Keynote can spice up your presentation by including audio and visual effects, from playing music and movies to showing visually interesting effects — stuff like text sliding across the display or dissolving away into nothingness. Such effects help get your point across and hold an audience's attention.

Note

Keynote comes as part of the iWork suite. Your Mac might come with a trial version of iWork, which lets you try Keynote to see whether you might find it useful before you lay out money to buy it.

Creating a Presentation

An entire Keynote presentation consists of one or more slides, where each slide displays information to make a single point. Each slide typically contains text, as shown in