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Find all keynote files on mac

I have Keynote presentations scattered in various files all over my iMac. How can I find them all to organize them? This was easy in the PC days, it was *.key. Is there a Mac equivalent?

Thanks.

Posted on Jan 23, 2022 12:32 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 23, 2022 12:51 PM

If you have Presentations selected in the Spotlight Search Results categories in System Preferences, then a Spotlight query can find your keynote (.key) files. If it wasn't selected, select it, and then drag/drop your startup drive (e.g. Macintosh HD) icon onto the Spotlight Preferences > Privacy window. Wait a minute and then select and remove it [-] from that panel. Spotlight will now reindex your drive and this time, index those Keynote presentations. If you click the Spotlight icon 🔍 in the menu extras area, you will see an indexing progress bar. You don't need to type anything to see this progress:



Before you invoke Spotlight, consider a change to Finder's Preferences > Advanced pane:


When performing a search: [ Search the Current Folder  ↕︎ ]


And in the Finder View menu > Show Path Bar and when you click on a discovered Keynote file, you can see its path at the bottom of the Finder window.


Open a new Finder window and set your directory location to the Desktop. In the Finder search field, enter the following:


kind:keynote


You will have a Search: This Mac "Desktop" sub-toolbar. If you get no results on the Desktop, click "This Mac".

5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 23, 2022 12:51 PM in response to katierose

If you have Presentations selected in the Spotlight Search Results categories in System Preferences, then a Spotlight query can find your keynote (.key) files. If it wasn't selected, select it, and then drag/drop your startup drive (e.g. Macintosh HD) icon onto the Spotlight Preferences > Privacy window. Wait a minute and then select and remove it [-] from that panel. Spotlight will now reindex your drive and this time, index those Keynote presentations. If you click the Spotlight icon 🔍 in the menu extras area, you will see an indexing progress bar. You don't need to type anything to see this progress:



Before you invoke Spotlight, consider a change to Finder's Preferences > Advanced pane:


When performing a search: [ Search the Current Folder  ↕︎ ]


And in the Finder View menu > Show Path Bar and when you click on a discovered Keynote file, you can see its path at the bottom of the Finder window.


Open a new Finder window and set your directory location to the Desktop. In the Finder search field, enter the following:


kind:keynote


You will have a Search: This Mac "Desktop" sub-toolbar. If you get no results on the Desktop, click "This Mac".

Jan 24, 2022 10:04 AM in response to katierose

Erase and reinstall seems to be a broken record with Apple Support. As Spotlight is part of macOS, there is no separate community for it, and we can continue to discuss it right here in these threads within the Big Sur community.


If you have found a solution to find all of your .key files, that is all well and good, though a working Spotlight solution would be useful too.

Find all keynote files on mac

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