adobe captivate 2023 – The Logical Blog

September 9, 2025

Adobe Captivate: How to Use the Certificate Widget

One of the most common requests I hear from eLearning developers is, “Can I automatically provide learners with a certificate once they’ve completed my Captivate project?” The good news is—yes, you can! Adobe Captivate includes a Certificate Widget that makes it easy to recognize learner achievement with a polished, professional-looking certificate.

Why Use a Certificate?

Certificates give learners a sense of accomplishment, especially when completing compliance courses, corporate training, or skills-based modules. They’re also helpful for organizations that want to document training completion.

When to Use the Certificate Widget

If you publish your project to a web server or other non-LMS environment, the Certificate Widget is an excellent option for providing learners with proof of completion.

However, most platforms already offer built-in certificate functionality if your content is hosted on an LMS (Learning Management System). In those cases, using your LMS certificate feature instead of Captivate’s widget is usually better—this ensures tighter integration with completion tracking and reporting.

Adding a Certificate in Captivate

Here’s how to set it up:

Insert the Certificate Widget
- On the left toolbar, click the Widget icon.
- Select Certificate from the widget options.
- The certificate block will be added to your slide.
Customize Certificate Visual Properties
- With the certificate block selected, select the Visual Properties panel on the right.
- Choose from the available certificate designs.
- Update placeholder fields for learner name, course title, completion date, and signature.
- Adjust fonts and colors to better align with your branding.
Preview and Publish
- Preview your project to confirm the certificate looks correct.
- If you’re publishing to an LMS, test to ensure learner details (such as name and completion date) are displayed properly.

Best Practices

Only rely on the widget if you’re not using an LMS. For LMS-hosted courses, use the platform’s certificate feature whenever possible.
Keep the certificate design professional and straightforward.
Test your project thoroughly in the environment where learners will access it.
Use the built-in layouts as a foundation and apply branding updates through the Visual Properties panel.

Here’s a video I created that demonstrates the process of adding and formatting a certificate widget.

Final Thoughts

The Certificate Widget in Adobe Captivate provides a quick, no-code way to reward learners with proof of completion—especially when publishing to a web server or other non-LMS environment. For LMS-based courses, it’s usually better to let your LMS handle certificates so they’re fully integrated with your reporting system.

Need More Help with Captivate?

I offer live, project-based Adobe Captivate training and 1:1 mentoring for teams and individuals. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to master advanced features, I can help.

September 13, 2023

Adobe Captivate 12 (2023): The Timeline Widget

In the spirit of learner engagement and interactivity, you're going to love the widgets you'll find in Adobe Captivate 2023 (also known as Captivate 12). Over the next couple of weeks, I'll show you how to use the widgets in a project.

First up: the Timeline widget.

Open or create a Captivate project and insert a blank slide.

From the icons at the left, click Add new widget.

Choose Timeline widget.

The widget is added to the slide with placeholder content.

On the Visual Properties panel, change the number of timeline objects by moving the Number of nodes slider to as few as 2 and to as many as 6.

Select a design:

Add or remove your block components:

And replace the placeholder objects with your own content.

Preview the project to see the results and interact with the widget.

If you want to see the Timeline widget in action, check out this video.

If you're looking for a step-by-step training workbook, Adobe Captivate 2023 training, or mentoring, we've got you covered.

August 1, 2023

Adobe Captivate 12: The Interface

With the recent release of the all-new Adobe Captivate 12, I'm beginning a series introducing you to some of my favorite features. This week, let's take a look at the new interface. If you're a veteran Captivate developer, you'll see that much has changed in this new interface, and many of the old standards have been removed (not changed or moved… removed entirely).

There are now two versions of Captivate that you can download from Adobe using one subscription: Adobe Captivate Classic (also known as Captivate 2019) and Adobe Captivate (also known as Captivate 12 and Captivate 2023). The two versions are very different, and we offer training and support for both. You can download both Adobe Captivate Classic and the new Adobe Captivate and have both on your computer at the same time, assuming different installation locations are defined when the applications are installed.

This article focuses on Captivate 12.

When you start Captivate 12, the first thing you'll see is the Home screen.

If you click the New Project button, you'll create a new blank project. Click the Open option and you can retrieve and open existing Captivate 12 projects. This brings me to a warning about using the new Captivate. There is no option for upgrading legacy Captivate projects to Captivate 12. If you elect to work with Captivate 12, do so with the understanding that you're creating new, responsive projects. The big thing about responsive projects is that you aren't asked to define a project's width and height as you create a new project. The Canvas size is fluid, and your content will automatically reflow to fit any screen size.

Adobe has indicated that as Captivate 12 evolves and matures, there will be a workflow for upgrading from legacy projects to the new version. The lack of an upgrade path appears to be the main reason that Adobe will continue to support Captivate Classic until 2027. I expect that it will take a few years to add features to Captivate 12 that are currently in Captivate Classic. For example, in Captivate 12, there aren't any slide masters. Nor is there a Library, virtual reality, or support for importing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

The new interface is very clean and modern-looking.

The Filmstrip is now simply the Slides panel.

At the far left is a column of tools that replaces the Captivate 2019 toolbar.

At the right, in place of the Properties inspector, Library, and Timing inspector, there's a cluster of icons that display Visual properties, Interactions, Animations, Audio settings, and Accessibility.

And at the bottom right are two easy-to-overlook icons: TOC and Playbar (which replaces the Skin Editor) and Project Properties.

One awesome feature of the new Captivate is the preview icons at the top of the window.

Using these icons, you can quickly see how your content will look as it reflows on various screen sizes (desktop, tablet, and mobile).

In the coming weeks, I'll show you the project creation process, how the many tools work, and how Captivate 12 compares to Captivate Classic/2019.