Adobe Captivate: Pre-Edit Your Text Captions

When you record a Captivate demonstration or simulation, one of the coolest things that Captivate can do for you is automatically create the text captions. All you need to do to enjoy this feature is select Add Text Captions for any of the recording modes prior to recording.

If you read Jennie's article about end of sentence punctuation, I'm betting that you are now torn between adding the punctuation to the end of your sentences–or not. By default, Captivate does not add the end of sentence punctuation to the text captions. If you've decided that end of sentence punctuation is something you'd like, here's a quick way to have Captivate add them for you as you record a simulation or demonstration.

1. Exit Captivate.  
2. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to where Captivate has been installed on your computer (typically [InstallDirectory]/Adobe/Adobe Captivate).  
3. Find CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl.  
4. Make a backup copy of the CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl file and store it in a safe place. (This is the most important step–if you mess up the CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl file during the steps that follow, you could always copy and paste the original file back into the Adobe Captivate folder… no harm, no foul.)  
5. Open original CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl with NotePad (Windows) or SimpleText (Mac).  
6. Scroll through the document–much of the text in the file won't make much sense to you. However, you'll notice that most of the lines of text end with a closed quote and a greater than sign.

     

7. Click between the last letter and the closed quote, and then type a period.

   

   In the image below, you can see that I've added end of sentence punctuation to all of the text.

     

8. Save and close the RDL file.

Record a Captivate project using any of the modes to see the changes in the text captions (ensure Add Text Captions is selected from the Captions area). The resulting text captions will all have end of sentence punctuation.

Go ahead, give it a try. I think you'll find editing the RDL file to be easy and, in the long run, a real time-saver. But please, for your own sanity, please take my advice and backup the RDL file prior to making changes to the original!

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