Adobe Captivate 3: Reclaiming Clickable Audio on Imported PowerPoint Slides

I recently received an interesting email from a Captivate user who wanted to keep an audio sound effect used in an imported PowerPoint presentation. Specifically, this person had a little bell icon on a slide that was supposed to make a sound if clicked. After importing the slide into Captivate, you could still click on the bell icon but all you could hear was a mouse-click sound. Strange! What happened to the bell sound effect?

I wrote an article a few weeks ago about the improved PowerPoint import features in Adobe Captivate 3. I wrote that you can now import the PowerPoint animations used on the slides. However, you do not get to keep your audio effects. In fact, Captivate treats the imported slides as animations and inserts a Click Box over the entire slide that controls navigation. The sound the user reported above is actually the default mouse click sound you’ll get with any Click Box.

Here’s what I would do to reclaim the audio effect on the bell image mentioned above.

1. First, open the slide in question in Captivate 3

   You’ll notice that there is, in fact, a large Click Box covering the entire slide, including the bell image (which is really just part of the animation at this point).

2. Resize the Click Box so it is no longer covering the bell
3. Insert a new Click Box that just covers the bell
4. Set the options of the new Click Box so that the On Success is set to No Action. On the Options tab, add a Success Caption (you won’t need a Failure or Hint Caption)





5. Show the Properties of the Success Caption and remove the text. Then set the Caption type to [transparent]



6. Still on the Properties of the Success Caption, go to the Audio tab and import the sound effect you want to use and click OK



If you preview the project now, you’ll be able to click the bell image on the slide (you’ll really be clicking the Click Box) and the the sound you attached to the Success Caption should play. The cool thing about this trick is that the Success Caption that appears is invisible to the user thanks to the options you set in steps 4 and 5 above.

One final thing, but it’s a biggie. You’ll probably notice that the sound will only play one time when you click the Click Box.  Here’s how you get around this Click Box limitation:

1. Insert a Blank Slide before the slide containing the image and the Click Box
2. Set the timing of the new slide to something very fast (.1 second–a tenth of a second–will work wonderfully)
3. Back on the slide with the Click Box and bell image, show the Properties of the Click Box you created over the bell image and change the On Success to Go to previous slide (in the picture below, the previous slide happened to be Slide 1). Then click OK.



Now when you preview the project and click the bell image, you’ll jump to the previous slide, which will only play for a nano-second and then continue to the slide with the Click Box over the bell image (which you can click over and over again–and enjoy the sound).

Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.