Month: September 2008

1. Create or open a Captivate project.
2. Ensure the project has at least one question slide, or at least one object in the project that is reporting.

   You can enable reporting for a project by showing the Properties of an object and selecting Include in Quiz and Report answers on the Reporting tab.

   

3. Choose Quiz > Quiz Preferences to display the Preferences dialog box

   

4. Select Enable reporting for this project

   

5. Select E-mail and then type the email address of the person who should receive the reporting data (the data will be saved to an ATT file if you select Attachment).

   

6. Select Settings from the Quiz category

   

7. Select Show Score at end of quiz

   

8. Click OK

   There should now be a results slide in your project containing a Send E-mail button.

   

   The results slide can be customized to suit your taste and is typically positioned near the end of the project. When customer's click the Send E-mail button in your published output, Captivate will gather the reporting data from the project, and then email the data to the email recipient you specified earlier. 

• Character Format. Pick this one when your cursor is sitting inside a Character format. Then, highlight a word or phrase and tap Control + v (it's always Paste, never Paste Special with a Copy Special) to paste the Character format onto the selected text.
• Paragraph Format. Pick this one when your cursor is anywhere inside a  paragraph. The paragraph format is copied to the clipboard and you can paste it onto any paragraph that needs the same format applied.
• Conditional Text Settings. You can use this to avoid the notoriously-difficult Conditional Text dialog box to apply Condition Tags.
• Table Column Width. If your cursor is in a table, you can copy the column width value, select one or more columns, and paste to make them all the same.

If you are still following me, you are most likely thinking that these commands just represent another way to do something you are already doing, like using the Paragraph Catalog to apply Paragraph formats. So what's so cool about Copy Special?

I like to use it in conjunction with the Find/Change dialog box. For example, let's say I import a Word file that includes bulleted paragraphs. The bullets come in to my Frame document, but they show up using a format imported from Word called List Paragraph and not the one I created in Frame called BulletList.

1. Place my cursor in the first bullet paragraph
2. Open Find/Change and select Find: Paragraph Tag (this puts the current paragraph format name into the text box on the right, in my case it will say List Paragraph)
3. Open the Paragraph Catalog and assign the BulletList format to the first item in the list
4. Choose Edit > Copy Special > Paragraph format and copy the BulletList format to the clipboard
5. Return to the still-open Find/Change dialog box and select "By Pasting" from the Change menu

Having been burned by global Find/Change sequences over the years, I now prefer to begin cautiously. I click the Find button.

Want to learn more about Adobe FrameMaker? Come to our upcoming Introduction to FrameMaker 8 classes on October 7-8 or November 3-4. Both classes will be held in a virtual classroom–so you can attend this live, interactive class from anywhere in the country. All you need is a computer with fast Internet access, a headset and the current version of the FrameMaker (the 30-day trial version of the software works fine). You can ask all the questions you like because all virtual classes are led by a live instructor–this is not pre-recorded content. 

• Everybody is invited to read his or her/their own poetry at the gathering.
• Anyone who wants his or her/their palm read should stop by the séance tent.

• Everybody is invited to read a poem at the gathering.
• Everybody is invited to read poetry at the gathering.

• Anyone who wants palm reading should stop by the séance tent.

• All attendees of the gathering are invited to read their poetry.
• Individuals who want their palm read are invited to stop by the séance tent.

Notice that even though the word individuals is plural, the word palm is singular, because each person would only have one palm read.

Adobe FrameMaker Question: How Do I Disable the History Alert 

by Quinn McDonald

1. What do you do best? (Write it down in 50 words or less)
2. What will you offer your clients? (Be specific, it has to be measurable and achievable).
3. What and how will you charge? By the hour? The project? The deliverable?
4. Once you have items 1 through 3 answered, develop a brief (30-second) summary speech that answers the question "What do you do?"

   Anyone should be able to understand it, not just experts in your field. You won't talk about cost in that summary speech, but when you are asked, you will know.

5. Pick a business name that describes what you do. Stay away from cute and clever names or names that can be mistaken for something else.

   If you are an interior designer and offer faux finishes for walls, calling yourself "Wall Smart" will cause more problems than smiles.

6. Get a business card printed. Don't worry about being elaborate, get your business name and phone number on a card to hand out. Always carry business cards with you.  Register your business with the state Treasurer and call a CPA to find out what records to keep.
7. Start a Website. If you can't do that, get a blog-having your name on the internet is necessary when you are starting out.
8. Where are your potential clients? Ask friends, former co-workers for recommendations, look on job sites (local is great for starting) for companies that are advertising for the kind of work you offer. 

   Google the company to find someone to talk to. Skip HR, go for the department you want to work with. If you can't find a name, use the phone number to find a company directory.

9. Join a professional organization. Go to meetings. Listen more than you talk.

   Start conversations with people about the topics you know about. Find out what people in your field need.

10. Read the business section of the newspaper. Know what companies are hiring or laying off.

    Companies that lay off employees often have room for part-time workers or consultants. Be prepared to send a lot of emails and make follow-up phone calls. You will have to look for work, it won't fall in your lap.

    Be prepared to make enough phone calls or send enough emails to get five rejections a day. That should lead to some good news, too. 

eLearning Challenge

When Adobe Captivate developers create interactive courses or quizzes, those projects can either report the quiz results to an LMS, or have the quiz results sent to an administrator via an email.

If the data was collected by an LMS, the data is parsed and tracked by the LMS and there is no additional work to do except run reports.

However, if the quiz results were attached to Outlook email files (the attachments are ATT files), or were saved to a folder on your computer, you would have to manually open the ATT files, copy the data and then paste it into Access, Excel or into a raw text file–one ATT data file at a time.

Enter CaptivateMyData! This tool will automate the process of parsing the data located in those ATT files for you in just a few seconds.

Click here to see how CaptivateMyData works.

Click here for more information about CaptivateMyData, or to order and download your copy.