This page contains information on the KEY file extension (Apple iWork Keynote presentation document), a popular document file format
| File extension | .key | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Category | Document File | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Description | Files with a .key extension are created by Apple's "Keynote" application which forms part of Apple's iWork office suite, a set of applications which run on the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems, and also includes Numbers (for spreadsheets) and Pages (for word processing).
Keynote began life in 2002 as an internal Apple tool developed for Steve Jobs to help him present at MacWorld. The first version was made available to the public in 2003 as Keynote 1.0 and was designed to compete with Microsoft's Powerpoint presentation software which formed part of Microsoft Office. Designed to let users easily create, play and share presentations, Keynote contains most of the features found in modern presentation software, such as a slide navigator, the ability to add tables, shapes and charts to slides and a powerful media browser which allows users to drag and drop music from from iTunes, and photos from iPhoto and Aperture into their slides. Keynote contains a large number of pre-designed themes to let users select common presentation formats, and powerful graphics tools to manipulate embedded images and provide advanced 3D transitions between slides (powered by OpenGL). The major Keynote releases are summarised below:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Actions | Convert KEY file View other document file formats |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical Details | Official file format specifications for iWork Keynote files are not published by Apple, but it is still possible to look at a developer document Apple released for iWork '05 file formats.
A .key file is actually a compressed ZIP file comprised of a number of other different files combined that together make up a .key file. The most recent version of Keynote saves files with an "Index" directory containing Apple's proprietary IWA file format, a "Metadata" directory with .plist files, a "Data" directory with image assets (e.g. backgrounds and photos used in slides) and one or more jpg files for allowing quick previews. Files created by Keynote in iWork cannot be opened by programs other than iWork. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Associated programs | Apple iWork Keynote 5.1 Keynote 5.2 Keynote 5.3 Keynote 6.0 Keynote 6.1 Keynote 6.2 Keynote 6.5 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developed by | Apple Inc | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MIME type | application/x-iwork-keynote-sffkey application/vnd.apple.keynote |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Useful links | Keynote details on Wikipedia Keynote supported file formats Ars Technica review of iWork '14 Tim Bray on the early history of the Keynote file format Apple iWork product page Keynote file format compatibility Convert KEY file |
Convert KEY file
Using Zamzar it is possible to convert KEY files to a variety of other formats
- key to html (Hypertext Markup Language)
- key to jpg (JPEG compliant image)
- key to key09 (Apple iWork '09 Keynote Document)
- key to mov (Apple QuickTime Movie)
- key to pdf (Portable Document Format)
- key to png (Portable Network Graphic)
- key to ppt (Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation)
- key to pptx (Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Presentation)
- key to tiff (Tagged image file format)
