If your slideshow is very long, chapters can help to structure your slideshow into logical parts. Chapters offer several benefits during authoring and playback, they include:
- Chapters can be collapsed or expanded in the Storyboard. Collapsing chapters that you are not currently working on saves a lot of horizontal space and thus less horizontal scrolling is required.
- Chapters can have custom background colors. Color coding your chapters help with quick navigation as you are working on large projects. Instead of looking for particular thumbnails as you are scrolling through your Storyboard, simply look for the correct chapter background color. You can assign colors based on the status of the chapters: Red for “needs work”, yellow for “minor tweaks”, and green for “done”.
- During playback you can jump to the start of the previous or next chapter.
Adding a Chapter
- Move the Playhead in the Storyboard or Timeline to the first slide of the intended new chapter.
- Select Add… from the Chapter submenu of the menu.
- Optionally you can also right click on the Storyboard background to and select the same menu command from the context menu.
- In the popover that appears, enter the chapter name and then press the ⏎ key
Deleting a Chapter
- Move the Playhead in the Storyboard or Timeline to the first slide of the chapter.
- Select Remove from the Chapter submenu of the menu.
- Optionally you can also right click on the Storyboard background to and select the same menu command from the context menu.
Chapter Options
Move the Playhead in the Storyboard or Timeline to the first slide of a chapter. Select Options… from the Chapter submenu of the menu or from the context menu when right-clicking on the chapter name in the Storyboard. A popover opens that lets you edit additional chapter parameters.
- You can choose an (optional) chapter color, which is visible on the background in the Storyboard. This color has no effect during playback, but can be helpful during authoring, e.g. to denote various states of being finished, or different thematic groups. It is entirely up to you how you use those colors.
- Click on the “Loops” checkbox, if you want a chapter to play in an endless loop. This is especially useful for an intro chapter, that plays while the audience is entering the room and is being seated, or for a post-credits chapter, that is looping while the audience is leaving the room again. To exit a looped chapter during playback, simply press the ⌥→ keys to jump to the next chapter.
- You can create a slideshow with multiple playback variants within a single document – e.g. a full length presentation, and a short trailer version. The chapter options popover contains checkboxes that lets you specify whether the chapter plays in variants “A”, “B”, and “C”. By default all are checked. Uncheck some of them if you do not want this chapter to play in the respective playback variant.
Collapsing & Expanding Chapters
You can collapse a chapter, to take up less horizontal space, so that less scrolling is required to move around in your slideshow. You can also expand a chapter that you are currently working on, to easily focus on a specific chapter.
To collapse a chapter, click on the disclosure triangle next to the chapter name. If you press the ⌥ key and click on the disclosure triangle all chapters will collapse at once.
To expand the chapter, click on the disclosure triangle again.
To collapse a chapter, click on the disclosure triangle next to the chapter name.
Chapter Navigation
To quickly navigate between chapters you can:
- Select a chapter name from the Chapter submenu of the menu.
- Press ⌥→ to move to the start of the next chapter
- Press ⌥← to move to the start of the previous chapter