Help create a Keynote presentation from another Keynote presentation

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
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#1

Hi all,

I’m incredibly new to all things programming/scripting. 5 days ago I didn’t even know what AppleScript was.

Long story short I’m looking for a way to use the content of one Keynote Presentation to make another Keynote Presentation. The reason for this is because, despite my best efforts to distribute correct templates and style guides, I still get handed incorrect presentations right before an event is due to start.

If there is anyone who would be prepared to help point me in the right direction with this I would be incredibly grateful. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading as much as I can and finding as many guides/tutorials as possible however I’ve hit a point where it seems that no amount of googling is helping.

Where I’m at currently:
I’m able to extract the text from a presentation using the following script which was adapted from a post [user=2]KniazidisR[/user] made.


set theText to ""

tell application "Keynote"
	set theSlides to slides of document 1
	repeat with theSlide in theSlides
		tell (contents of theSlide)
			set theText to theText & "   Slide " & slide number & return & "=========" & return
			set theText to theText & object text of iWork item 1 of item 1 of theSlide & return & return
		end tell
	end repeat
end tell

which will output (for the sakes of this post) the following:

set theText to "   Slide 1
=========
Senior School Assembly
23 April 2021

   Slide 2
=========
Australians all let us rejoice 
For we are one and free
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil,
 Our home is girt by sea: 
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts 
Of beauty rich and rare, 
In history's page let every stage 
Advance Australia fair, 
In joyful strains then let us sing 
Advance Australia fair."

I’ve also had success running the following to create a new presentation, load the correct theme, and create a slide using the correct template.

tell application "Keynote"
	activate
	set thisDocument to ¬
		make new document with properties ¬
			{document theme:theme "KeynoteScotchMasterThistle1920_1200"}
	
	tell thisDocument
		set base slide of the first slide to master slide "1_Title Slide"
	end tell
end tell

Now, what I would really like, is to be able to use the text from the export from the first presentation to create a new slide where required, and then use the text that was extracted to make new text item where required. I want to avoid using default title item and default body item because I’ve had problems before with text going missing if someone resizes the object.

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, I really appreciate it and I hope someone is able to give me some pointers to get this working.

thanks

#2

If I understand correctly, you want to generate a presentation from the contents of a special text file. This can be done as follows. Note that you probably also need to set the position, width and height of the default title item as well, using the script.


set theText to " Slide 1
=========
Senior School Assembly
23 April 2021

Slide 2
=========
Australians all let us rejoice 
For we are one and free
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil,
 Our home is girt by sea: 
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts 
Of beauty rich and rare, 
In history's page let every stage 
Advance Australia fair, 
In joyful strains then let us sing 
Advance Australia fair."

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "Slide "
set theItems to text items of theText
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""

set slidesToGenerate to (count theItems) - 1

tell application "Keynote"
	activate
	set thisDocument to ¬
		make new document with properties ¬
			{document theme:theme id "Application/White/Standard"}
	
	tell thisDocument
		try
			set base slide of slide 1 to master slide "Title"
		end try
		set object text of iWork item 1 of item 1 of slide 1 to text 12 thru -1 of item 2 of theItems
		if slidesToGenerate > 1 then
			repeat with k from 2 to slidesToGenerate
				make new slide at end of slides with properties {slide number:k}
				try
					set base slide of slide k to master slide "Title"
				end try
				set object text of iWork item 1 of item 1 of slide k to text 12 thru -1 of item (k + 1) of theItems
			end repeat
		end if
	end tell
	
end tell