How to use pre-made planner dashboards to design your own planner

If you’ve been digital planning for awhile, I’m sure you thought about designing your own planner, with pages and sections that YOU need. Planner that will be in your style, custom made, functional, beautiful and which won’t break your wallet.

I’m excited to tell you more about new product line I launched: pre-made planner dashboards. This product will be ideal for these who know they way around Keynote app and how to create planners in it. But, even if you don’t have experience with the app, you can totally learn it on the go.

Pre-made planner dashboards are also perfect if you want to combine all your notebooks and planners in one document, so that you can access them from one dashboard in your note-taking app.

For these of you who’s new to Keynote, let’s cover some of the basics first. If you know your way around, skip to the fun part where I show how you can add your favourite pdf planner to the new dashboard.

How to add hyperlinks in Keynote:

You can copy/ paste the hyperlink and just change the linked slide to save time.

How to replace image:

How to design page, using elements, from scratch:

How to add monthly/ weekly layouts:

So what if you already have planners and notebooks that you are love using? How about combining them into one document so that they are all linked and accessible from main dashboard? It’s possible! :) But will require a bit of your patience.

Unfortunately, you can’t import pdf planner to Keynote with all it’s pages on separate slides and with hyperlinks. But there is a couple of lifehacks.

Method 1

Use an online converter from pdf to Keynote, like this one: https://www.cleverpdf.com/pdf-to-keynote.

If your planner is less then 20 MB size and doesn’t have 500 + pages you can convert it online. Basically, you upload your pdf and after conversion download keynote file with each page of pdf on separate slide. Now you can just add all these pages to your main keynote file dashboard and add hyperlinks.

Method 2

If online converter didn't work, you can add your planner, page by page manually. You'll need to do it on your laptop tho.

1. Make a split view of Keynote file and pdf planner in Preview app

2. Add more empty sliders in Keynote

3. Drag and drop planner pages to empty slider one by one

Pages that are the same and repeat throughout the planner (like weekly/ daily pages) make a master slides. This will help to significantly reduce your exported pdf file size.

To make a master slide page:

1. Go to View menu - Edit master slides

2. Then drag and drop your page there. Click on Done. 
I recommend to add needed hyperlinks to that one page first and then copy it as many times as you need without increasing file size.

How to export pdf on laptop:

Go to File - Export to - PDF

On your Ipad:

You can design unlimited page layouts using elements that are included with Dashboards and elements that you can purchase separately. And when you add your own planner pages, you can add these elements to reach the consistency in style.

Drop a comment below if you have questions <3

Talk to you soon,

Kate