
There have been many times that I have been given a keynote file from someone, and I wanted to get a movie or picture out of it and save it as a separate file. Here’s how to do it.
Option 1 – Show Package contents.
If you right click on a Pages document (or a Keynote document) there may be an option called ‘Show Package Contents’ that will allow you to see the files in the document.
- Find your Pages document in the finder and ‘right click’ (or hold down control while you click) on the icon. You will see a menu.
- If the menu has an option that says ‘Show Package Contents’ you can just click on this and you will get a folder with all the documents in your Pages or Keynote file.

Click on ‘Show Package Contents’ to see the files that are in your Pages document.
You will now see a folder with all the original documents (pictures, movies etc) that were imported into your Pages or Keynote file.

You can now see the original full size images that were imported into the Keynote or Pages file.
If there is no option for ‘Show Package Contents’ this means that the Keynote or Pages document is beign saved in a single file. You can change this. (Thanks to David for this tip – see the comments!)

Here there is no ‘Show Package Contents’ option
To create a package:
- Open Keynote, then click File, and go down the menu to “advancedâ€.
- Select “change file typeâ€, and the options are “single†or “package†Choose “packageâ€
- (Re-save your file and this should allow you to see the ‘Show Package Contents’ option.
How to extract the pictures from a Keynote or Pages without creating a ‘package’.
It may be that you have a Keynote or Pages file that you want to extract a video or picture from but you do not have Keynote or Pages so you cannot create a package. Here’s how to do it manually.
1. Find the Keynote or Pages file in the finder.
2. Right click on the file and select ‘duplicate’. (This is just so that you are working on a copy and won’t hurt the original file.)

Duplicate the keynote file
3. Rename the file from ‘xxx.pages’ to ‘xx.zip’ Tt do this click on the filename of the new keynote file so that the filename is selected then press the right arrow, delete ‘.pages’ and and type ‘.zip’
In my example I’m changing it from ‘OCC copy’ to ‘OCC copy.zip’
4. It will prompt you to make sure you want to change the name, click ‘Use.zip’.
5. Now double click on the .zip file and it will ‘expand’ the zip file to create a folder.
6. Open the folder and inside the folder will be all the movies and pictures from your keynote file. You can copy them, move them, whatever you want. This is identical to if you had been able to select ‘Show Package Contents’ for the file.
Thank you so very much, this has been very helpful
gratefully,
dennis
Thank you! That’s awesome!
INCREDIBLE!!!! THANKS A LOT.
Wow, thanks! Excellent hack. Who knew you could decode a Keynote that way. BTW, also works with PowerPoint .pptx files. If you just copy the image in the application, it’s a lot smaller than the original. With this technique you can access the images in the presentation at full size.
Did not work; during unzipping of the zip file (at halfway point) it stops and I get “Unable to expand (Error 1 – Operation not permitted)”
Thoughts anyone?
Many thanks for this post which was very useful and saved a lot of time ! Regards from France, Bertrand
Thank you! That was brilliant help!
OMG!!!! this is super helpful!!! Can’t thank you enough!!
Wow, it actually works! thanks!
Amazing – thanks!
Thank you man! You saved me hours of editing
Thank you! very clear explanation and it worked like a charm!
The best hack I’ve used in ages!!! I’m never going to forget this. Shot man!
Thanks Mike!
This was extremely helpful.
Thanks!
wow this worked perfect. thank you!
Thank you very much indeed!
Thank you so much, solved an old problem like a treat!
I don’t know if I’m using a different version, but it didn’t work this way. Instead, I duplicated the file and then clicked “export”. Then, it asks you to choose the type of file you want, and I picked “images”. Then it created the .zip file.
Thanks a lot Mike. This is simply excellent!
Thank you so much, this was such a valuable tip. Hope to get back to your posts soon.
First step said to “find the image in the finder”.
How do you do that? Especially if the keynote was sent to you by someone else and not created on your own computer. Where do the clips & images live?
You only need to find the keynote file itself. If it’s in an email you can just drag it to the desktop.
Great! Very helpfull, thanx!
Great tutorial. The photos of each screen make it REALLY easy, and it works!
Thanks, Wayne!
Nice tip. Worked perfectly.
Simple and result perfectly
This worked like a charm and you saved our organization a lot of time and anguish. Thanks!
This little tip is HUGE!! Awesome – thank you!!
Perfect. Thank you!
3 years on and still saving loads of time! thanks for the great tutorial.
is there a way to do this for all of the fonts in a presentation?
No you can’t because the fonts are not actually stored in the presentation. They are stored in the fonts folder of the computer.