Open action in the Apple Keynote package

The Open action in the Apple Keynote package enables you to open an existing presentation file (.key), allowing your automation to view, edit, or update its content. It’s essential for ensuring your bot works on the correct file before performing further actions like adding or modifying slides.

This action is the first step in any workflow that involves making changes to a presentation, such as adding slides, updating content, or formatting. This action must always precede actions like Add slide, Edit slide text content, and so on.

Prerequisites

Ensure that you have installed the Keynote application and the same is accessible on the macOS machine where the automation runs.

Settings

  • Select one of the following options to open a presentation:
    • Variable: Enables you to open a file by specifying a file variable.
    • Control Room file: Enables you to open a file from the Control Room.
    • Desktop file: Enables you to open a file from the device. This field also accepts the file path input as a string variable or global value.

      In the Specific path field, specify the name and location of the file. For example: /Users/yourusername/Documents/Presentation.key

      Note: Regex is currently not supported on macOS
  • In the Open specific slide field, specify the slide number to open a specific slide.
  • Select the Show slide numbers on all slides field, to add slide numbers to all the slides.
  • In the Create session field, use one of the following tabs for creating a session:
    • Local session: to specify a session name that can be used only in the current bot.
    • Global session: to specify a session name that can be used across multiple bots, such as parent bots, child bots, and all other child bots of the parent bot.

      Recommendation: The parent and child bots should have the same package version.

    • Variable: to specify a session variable.

Best practices

Review some best practices when using this action:
  • Use variables for file paths to ensure your automations can handle different files dynamically, making it reusable for multiple presentations or environments.
  • Ensure that the specified file path is valid and the file exists; otherwise, the action will fail.
  • Ensure that you use the Save presentation action to save or create a copy of your presentation to prevent file corruption and to ensure all changes are committed. Additionally, you can use the Close action to save your presentation before closing it.