Keynote to PDF/PPT on a non-OSX operating system?

September 21, 2023 2:56 PM

We use OneDrive and some of our team members use Keynote but most don't. Is there a way to convert Keynote to PDF without being on a Mac? I can use Linux or Windows as a server that hooks into One Drive, looks for file or syncs that happen on the Keynote, and could convert it, however everything I've seen relies on having Keynote or using iCloud as an intermediary. No third party, off-site tools are allowed due to confidentiality of the documents.

This doesn't have to be 100% conversion, the final presentation will be manually massaged. The problem is the person in charge of the sales deck is always not the best person to timely get it in a PDF that the rest of the bid team can read. Assume no 3D slide transitions, embedded videos or anything complex are needed. The final version that goes out will have those and need to be manually exported. This is where two teams and disparate toolsets are trying to work together.

Even integrating with iCloud with a service account, if possible, would cause a lot of problems as the team isn't supposed to be using iCloud due to auditing issues anyway. But I can create essentially a service account and run scripts on files on a schedule or file change with access to OneDrive.

Is this at all possible? I'm surprised it isn't or I'm not googling on the write phrases for Github.

To be clear, I don't need to preview or edit the file, just export it to PDF or any format someone on a Windows can see.

posted by geoff. to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Not without having a Mac or an iOS device. No way for the original Keynote users to do the conversion? Depending on the accessibility of the files, you might be able to get a friendly MeFite to handle the conversions. Maybe post something on Ask or Jobs?
posted by Thorzdad at 3:24 PM on September 21, 2023

Response by poster: We have resources internally to do work like this but cannot due to the confidential and sensitive nature of proposals. Think rates on personell internally, bids for companies considering layoffs and needing help managing that, or less depressing big product launches that cannot be leaked.

Thinking of this maybe from a different angle, and maybe I don't know OSX's toolchain well enough but how does CI/CD work? Because that'll go off onto a server somewhere? This will be overkill for this particular project but I assumed OSX could not be virtualized or run in a Docker due to their new architecture. Or maybe I'm not just seeing it in the AWS/Azure lineup of things I can provision so I'm assuming no.
posted by geoff. at 3:53 PM on September 21, 2023

OpenOffice can do some of it, but I've had issues in the past with imports of PowerPoint not getting all of the formatting. So probably depends on how hard your Mac folks are pushing Keynote.
posted by straw at 3:56 PM on September 21, 2023

Maybe buy a basic desktop mac and leave it in someone's cube available via the network so it can run the automatic conversion whenever the .key file is updated? Or buy the windows using team a macbook that gets passed around to whoever is in charge of the manual conversion process.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 5:31 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Convert Pages, Numbers, or Keynote files to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and more

Convert a Pages, Numbers, or Keynote file online at iCloud.com

Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for iCloud lets you open, edit, and share your files from a supported browser on a Mac or PC.

1. Sign in to iCloud.com with your Apple ID. If you don't have an Apple device, learn how to create an Apple ID.
2. Double-click Pages, Numbers, or Keynote.
3. In the document, spreadsheet, or presentation manager, click the More button on the file that you want to convert, then choose Download a Copy. If you have the file open, click the More button in the toolbar, then choose Download a Copy.
4. Choose a format for the document. The converted file downloads to your browser’s default download location.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:41 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

If iCloud doesn't work, you could perhaps provision an OS X host on Github Actions and run targets (i.e. tasks, like converting a document to another format). With a private Github account, you might be able to be assured some kind of privacy. Or work encryption/decryption into the Action workflow to preserve confidentiality to some degree; you'd still need to decrypt somewhere along the line to do remote conversion.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:45 PM on September 21, 2023

Maybe an Applescript can be saved on each Mac user's computer that will upload the latest version of a converted file on a regular interval to OneDrive?
posted by oceano at 6:42 PM on September 21, 2023

Response by poster: GitHub could work! I found you can run OSX on Arch (and other distros)! https://hub.docker.com/r/sickcodes/docker-osx

Might as well set it up and an iCloud service account. Some back story: we often acquire companies that cling to their ways of working and hate our restrictive IT policies. So my hard requirements may seem silly but just plugging in a MacBook somewhere would get flagged. This is already on an approved cloud service so won’t show up on compliance checks.

I did find something out about Keynote. For whatever reason it has a complex format and other people had the same issue with diffing and version control I did:

https://github.com/psobot/keynote-parser

I do the same with PPT files but being an XML format it is easier. Don’t know why Apple chose a compressed binary format maybe to support their fancy OpenGL transitions? Doesn’t help me just found it interesting.

This isn’t my job but tracking down a hard to get ahold of executive at a newly acquired company who hates the idea they can’t just waive away heavy handed IT sort of is in so far I need the info in there. It also doesn’t hurt when an executive who just got bought out and leaves six months in remembers you as the one that just got things done and made their lives easier 🫠
posted by geoff. at 6:52 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

For whatever reason it has a complex format

IIRC, there was a major revision to the Keynote format a couple years back to allow efficient concurrent editing and saving small edits to the cloud. Wouldn't be surprised if some of the complexity stems from that. You're not being given an easy task; good luck.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:27 PM on September 21, 2023

Oh, and to automate iCloud.com work, you might use Selenium or similar to do the grunt work of automating logging into the site, loading files, converting them, and saving them within a headless browser. Apologies if you already know about Selenium.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:28 PM on September 21, 2023

We use OneDrive and some of our team members use Keynote

So you have compliant access to keynote? Keynote has a native "export to PDF" feature.

edit: i guess what you meant by "resources" is "people" with OSX handy.

This will be overkill for this particular project but I assumed OSX could not be virtualized or run in a Docker due to their new architecture.

OSX can be virtualized, it even runs in AWS.
posted by pwnguin at 2:16 PM on September 22, 2023

Dunno if this works with your security requirements but keynotes can be opened up on an iPhone or iPad and exported as PDFs as well as OSX.
posted by bitdamaged at 6:33 PM on September 22, 2023

macOS still has Automator for clicking through things like a real user would do, as in contemporary Robotic Process Automation. (Search those terms, geoff., 'macos automator' and 'robotic prices automation'.)
posted by k3ninho at 3:21 AM on September 25, 2023