Adobe Captivate: Quick Clicks and You’re Texting to Speech

by Kevin Siegel

The ability to convert text to speech using Captivate's built-in text to speech agents is awesome. All you need to do is select the slide note(s) you want to convert and then click the Text-to-Speech button.

Assuming you have installed NeoSpeech (a program that come with Captivate but needs to be installed manually), you will be able to choose from any one of five voices from the Speech Agent drop-down menu.

In addition to the five voices you get with Captivate, any voices that have already been installed on your computer will also appear in the Speech Agent drop-down menu. In the image below, Microsoft Anna, which comes with Windows, is also listed among the Speech Agents. 

After selecting an agent, all you need to do is click the Generate Audio button to convert the selected text to an audio file. Simple! Of course, if you follow these simple steps, you won't get the agent you were hoping for in the generated audio.

In the image below, notice that I have selected Kate from the Speech Agent drop-down menu. However, Microsoft Anna is shown at the right of the dialog box. Most new Captivate developers (and even some vets) miss this little detail. If I were to click the Generate Audio button now, I'd end up with an audio file containing Microsoft Anna, not Kate.

There is one subtle thing you have to do before selecting an agent and then clicking the Generate Audio button: click just above the text you'd like to convert and ensure the space above the text turns gray (see the image below).

If you miss this one simple click, you won't be using the agent you want… instead, you'll be using the default agent (which, as shown earlier, would have been Anna for me).