A student in a recent class wanted to give his eLearning customers the ability to print specific slides at any point throughout the lesson. Great idea. Sadly, there is no "Add Printer" feature in Adobe Captivate that will magically or instantly add a print button or print option to published Captivate eLearning lessons. However, it is possible to get the job done, if you know where to look. Read on…
Add a Print Button to a Single Slide
- Download a printer icon you like here
- Open an Adobe Captivate project and edit any slide
- Choose Insert > Animation and open the SWF you downloaded in Step 1
- Press F10 to preview a few slides and you will see the printer icon. If you click the Printer icon, the Print dialog box will appear.
Add a Print Button to Several Slides
- Follow steps 1, 2 and 3 above
- Right-click the SWF you inserted and select the Options tab
- Select rest of project from the Display for drop-down menu
- Click OK
- Press F10 to preview a few slides and you will see the printer icon on the current slide and on every slide for the rest of the project.
Add a Print Button to the Playbar
- Download a skin that has been modified to include a print button in place of an Info button by clicking here
- Unzip the file you downloaded and copy the default_print.swf file to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 3\Gallery\PlaybackControls\SwfBars
- Open a Captivate project and choose Project > Skin
- On the Playbar Control tab, select default_print from the Playbar drop-down
- Click OK
- Preview the project and you will see a printer icon on the playbar available for any and all slides within the project
Note: If you liked any of the print options presented above, be sure to thank Paul Dewhurst since he's the one that came up with these and many other Captivate widgets.
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