I’m a big fan of backing up my Captivate projects. Since drive space is truly infinite, and hard drives are inexpensive, save your work every few minutes and backup to a network drive every day. You might also want to consider saving your Captivate projects with different names (v1, v2, v3, etc.) as you reach milestones in your project. For instance, if I’m about to delete hidden slides, I give the project a new version number. I can always import the deleted slides into the newer version should I need them.
Any file created with any program can become corrupt. That’s a simple fact of life. When a Captivate project becomes corrupt, it typically will not open. How can Captivate projects become corrupt? Here’s the short list:
- Editing a project on a network drive. (You should do all of your work on your local hard drive and backup to the network drive.)
- Closing Adobe Captivate improperly.
- Using an older version of Adobe Captivate (for example, Macromedia Captivate 1.0).
- Copying and pasting objects/slides in an older version of Adobe Captivate.
- Using Adobe Captivate on a system that does not meet or exceed system requirements.
- It’s a really, really bad day.
If your Captivate project becomes corrupt, the quickest thing to do is throw that corrupt file away and get a copy of the project from the network drive. If you haven’t been practicing “safe backup,” and your Captivate project becomes corrupt, you may still be able to rescue the project using the following techniques.
- Upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Captivate and try to open the project.
- Create a new blank project with the same dimensions as the original project.
- In the new project, choose File > Import Slides/Objects from other Captivate projects
- Browse to and import the corrupted project.
If no slides show in the import dialog box, sorry to say but your project is beyond hope.
If slides do show in the import dialog, click OK. - Once the slides have imported, save your project.
You should now have an uncorrupted Adobe Captivate project.
Note: You cannot import Question slides.
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