Hmmm.... that's an interesting puzzle you present because I don't know that either of the two tools you mention, Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote, support you creating a PDF version of your presentation where the first page is full size and all the subsequent pages are two or three-up (that is, there are two slides or three slides per page).
On the other hand, it's a Mac, so there are PDF capabilities running deep throughout the system, including some pretty nifty features in the PDF viewer "Preview". In fact, that's how we are going to try and solve this puzzle...
First step is to save a PDF cover sheet that's your first slide only. You can do this a couple of ways, but in PowerPoint, for example, I'll choose "Print..." then "Save as PDF..." from the lower left menu:
Notice on this same window I'm going to specify that I only want pages 1-1 printed (e.g. saved as PDF) rather than the entire document. That's done on the middle-right, where it says "Slides" and then has two boxes, one that currently has "1" and the other "25": change the latter to a "1" too and you've got just the first slide as a little PDF doc.
Now, go back to the same "Print..." dialog box and choose 2-25 for the slides to print, and on the "Print What" pop-up, instead of having "Slides" as the option, instead choose:
You'll probably want "Handouts (2 slides per page)". Remember again to specify slides 2-25, don't start with the first one, and then "Save as PDF..."
Now we have two PDF files, one that's the cover page, and one that's the bulk of the handouts. How to merge the two PDF files? Well, turns out that our friend "Preview" can do the trick, believe it or not!
Select both PDF files, then double-click to open Preview with them both included:
Notice the title of this window: "seo-page1 (1 page) (2 documents, 7 total pages)". In my case, this is showing the name and length of the title page but it's also acknowledging that I have two PDF documents with a total of 7 pages. Your should similarly indicate that it has all your slides, not just the cover page.
Now you want to choose "Select All" from the "Edit" menu, which highlights all the PDF documents in the right sidebar, then, from the "File" menu, choose "Print Selected Pages" and...
As you can see in the little preview window, it's assembled the PDF documents exactly as we hope, with a single slide cover sheet and multi-slide-per-page handout sheets and selected them all by default. You can print this, but let's actually save it as a combined PDF file instead.
Remember how to do that? Right, the PDF button on the lower left. Simply choose "Save as PDF...", give it a new name, and you're done.
Nice! Thanks, Apple, for giving the Preview app this slick capability.
Sign up for my weekly AskDaveTaylor Newsletter and you'll receive even more tech and gadget help
right to your inbox, along with exclusive news and industry updates. It's good stuff. I promise!
Once upon a time, Mac OS X used Automator Plugins that you could create. After you created an Automator Action, you saved it as a plugin, then right clicked on the finder images and chose Automator Actions, then saved the plugin.
Snow Leopard no longer users Plugins for the finder, instead, you can use Services.
1. Open Automator
2. Choose the Service Template
3. At the top right, Where it says "Services receives selected", drop down the menu and select "PDF Files", in "any application"
4. Add the action (drag and drop), Combine PDF Pages
5. Add the Action, Rename Finder Item
6. A window opens saying "This action will change the names of the Finder items passed into it. Would you like to add a Copy Finder Items action so that the copies are changed and your originals are preserved?", Choose "Don't Add"
7. Choose the Drop Down "Add Date and Time" and select "Name Single Item" and under name "Basename only".
8. Open the Options and check "Show this action when the workflow runs"
9. Add the action "Move Finder Items"
10. To "Desktop" will be selected. It's best to find a location on your computer, create a folder and name it something like "Combined PDFs". Under the Drop down, find that folder and select it instead of Desktop.
11. Save As, "Combine PDF" or something similar
To run the Automator Service, simply go to the location of the PDF files, select them, then go to the menu at the top of the application and choose the application name. In this case, if I were doing it in the finder, I would go to Finder>Services>Combine PDF
A window will open and you can rename the file. Then it will move the file from the temporary folder into the PDF folder you selected, all within a few seconds.