A fellow Captivate developer sent me an email asking for advice. It seemed that he had just completed a slick eLearning lesson in Captivate. But as soon as he published the lesson, an email arrived from his application developer informing him that the application had just been updated. There were "minor" changes to the interface that needed to be included in the eLearning lesson.
I was asked if there was anything that the developer could do to show those "minor" updates short of re-recording and re-producing the lesson. (He had spent 40 hours producing the lesson and didn't have another 40 hours to spare.)
I asked him if the interface changes were, in fact, minor.
"Yes."
I asked him if he had included a significant number of buttons, text captions and other objects in the original project.
"Yes."
"Yes."
and "Oh yes!"
One final question from me: Was it possible to record the new lesson using the same width and height of the original?
"Yes."
After his final yes, I had a "yes" of my own. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you will love the following.
- Record the new lesson (being sure to capture the lesson using the identical width and height of the original, and the same script used for the original lesson).
- With the new lesson open, copy the first slide's background to the clipboard.
- Open the original lesson.
- Right-click the first slide and choose Paste as Background.
You would simply repeat the process on any sides needing to be updated. While it may seem like it's going to be a laborious process, you'll be able to move through a large project very quickly… much quicker than re-recording and re-producing the entire lesson.
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