Transform pdf in keynote or ppt

Question

Hi. I often see slideshows on the web, which you can download as a pdf. Is there a way probably using automator to transform this pdf presentations in keynote presentation. It is clear to me that does ones will not be editible, however if a workflow would just make a keynote slide out of every pdf slide (page) , that would be a great timesaver

Answer 1

Well, it's possible to convert the pages of a PDF into images with the Automator action "Render PDF Pages as Images". And it's possible to add images to an already opened Keynote presentation with "Create Image Slide". If you don't have a presentation opened already, you could use "Make New Keynote Presentation". Since you always have to have at least one slide in a presentation, a new presentation starts with a blank slide. After the images are added as slides, you can use "Delete Slide" to delete that first slide. I'm using iWork '08 and so the presentation actions are from that version.
I don't know what is inside your PDFs, so I'm going to assume they contain text documents. Often, text documents are laid out in a PDF to print on paper. The width and height of a PDF document that is 8.5 x 11.0 inches turns out to be 612 x 792 pixels. PDFs are defined with 72 points per inch and in this case the points get converted to pixels when making images with the Automator action. If you have a different size PDF document (use the inspector panel in the Preview app), you can multiple the size in inches by 72 to get the pixel size for the images that will be returned.
Here's a workflow I threw together just now that works for me:
1. *Make New Keynote Presentation* - I left the default theme set to White and I set the width to 612 and the height to 792. If Keynote isn't already open, this action will cause it to be opened. This action must come before the PDF, otherwise the created presentation is passed on to the next actions instead of the PDF. If you save this workflow as an application, you might want to choose the Options button on this action and select "Show this action when the workflow runs" so you can set the size each time.
2. *Get Selected Finder Items* - I chose this action so I could select a PDF in the Finder and then run the workflow. This works great if you save the workflow as an application and then place it in the Finder's toolbar. In case you're wondering, this action ignores the input from the previous action.
3. *Render PDF Pages as Images* - For testing, I left it set to the defaults: RGB, JPEG, 200 dpi, compression midway. This will be what you change if you want better clarity or different formats for some reason. This may take a long time. The more pages and the larger they, the longer this will take, of course.
4. *Create Image Slide* - I left this set to the defaults. Not really sure what the settings do, so you'll need to play with that to find out yourself. Keep in mind this will add the slides to the frontmost presentation open in Keynote, so it's probably a good idea to leave Keynote alone until the workflow is done. This also takes a long time, seems to be slightly longer than rendering the images. So, the more slides to add, the more time it'll take.
5. *Delete Slide* - This is to remove the first slide in the new presentation created with the first action in this workflow. You can't delete a slide if it's the only slide, so it's done after the other slides have been added. However, you might want to keep the slide and create an intro for the images.
And that's it. I tested it by selecting a PDF file in the Finder and returning to Automator to run the workflow. I also saved the workflow as an application and then put it in the Finder toolbar (shows up as an Automator icon), then I tested that by selecting a PDF file and then clicking on the Automator icon in the Finder's toolbar. Works for me both ways. Keep in mind you'd want to select only one PDF because multiple PDFs would be combined into one Keynote presentation.
You may want to add another action or two. You could add "Save Keynote Presentation" at the end which will save the frontmost presentation, and choose the Options button on the action and select "Show this action when the workflow runs" so you can name it whatever you want each time you run it. Then, if you don't expect you'd be using this several times in a row, you could add the action "Quit Application" and select Keynote so it'll be closed afterwards. Since Keynote creates a new presentation on its own each time it is opened, you'll probably want to deselect the checkbox that prompts you save any unsaved documents so it'll close immediately.
Also, Keynote doesn't seem to offer an option to not create a new presentation. It does however have a preference setting for the default theme instead of having a theme chooser appear. Setting that will prevent Keynote from bouncing in the Dock trying to get your attention to select a theme for a presentation you aren't going to use. Not that it matters, because you can just ignore since it'll stop bouncing once Automator creates another presentation in front of it.
The only reason I didn't make use of the new presentation created by Keynote when it's first opened is so the workflow would work as expected even when Keynote was already opened with other presentations. Having the first action create a new presentation ensures any presentations already opened in Keynote won't be modified. Of course, if you expect to be in that situation, you probably also don't want to add the action for quitting Keynote.