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A MacOS tool which consists of an AppleScript file run by Automator's Quick Action feature to convert presentations to PDF.

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Lynsay/MacOS-Automator-Presentation-Converter

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👩‍💻 MacOS Automator: Presentation To PDF Converter

A MacOS tool which consists of an AppleScript file run by Automator's Quick Action feature to convert presentations to PDF via Keynote.

🤔 Rationale

When using Blackboard Ally to generate an accessibility score for my lecture notes, the PDFs exported with PowerPoint had a low accessibility score of 5%. After taking the same source .pptx file and exporting it to PDF via Keynote, a high accessibility score of 95% was generated.

⚙️ Requirements

Keynote must be installed.

🔨 Testing Notes

This converter only works for .ppt, .pptx, and .key files. It has been tested with PowerPoint version 16.64 (365 Subscription) and Keynote version 12.1 (7034.0.86) on MacOS Monterey version 12.5. Your mileage may vary.

👾 Installation

There are two methods of installation - choose whichever one works for you.

⏱ The Quick Method

Unzip the PowerPoint or Keynote to PDF.workflow.zip file in this repo, and double-click to install the workflow.

⏳ The Less Quick Method

  • Open Automator.app.

Automator

  • Select "Quick Action" as the document type.

Select QuickAction

  • Select "Run AppleScript" as the action.

Run AppleScript

  • Edit the workflow process. The workflow should receive current documents in Finder.app. You can ignore the "input is" option, along with the image and colour.

Workflow Process

Paste AppleScript

  • The Quick Action is ready to use and appears on the contextual menu.

Converter Screenshot

📖 References

The following post from red_menace on Stack Overflow was particularly useful for separating parts of the file path- https://stackoverflow.com/a/63804087.

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A MacOS tool which consists of an AppleScript file run by Automator's Quick Action feature to convert presentations to PDF.

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