by Kevin Siegel 
A seasoned Captivate developer contacted me with a small dilemma. It seems that he was new to Captivate 5.5 (but had been using Captivate for nearly 4 years).
He needed to change the appearance of his mouse pointer throughout the project. In older versions of Captivate, changing the appearance of the mouse pointer was as simple as double-clicking the pointer on any slide (to open a properties dialog box), selecting a different pointer shape and then clicking the Apply to All button in the lower left of the dialog box.
In Captivate 5 and 5.5, most of the dialog boxes have been replaced by the Properties panel (also known as the Properties Inspector) and the available options are organized into groups.
He found the ability to change the appearance of the mouse pointer easily enough on the Properties panel. With the mouse pointer on any slide is selected, he chose a different pointer shape from among those available on the Options group. However, what he missed was the pesky Apply to all items of this type command. In the image below, notice that the command is just a bit hard to see in the upper right of the Options group.
After letting the developer know about the Apply to all items of this type option, he sent me a nice email letting me know that he had not even noticed the option. He thanked me for my time and that was that.
The rest of the story...
Shortly thereafter, I received another email from the developer. He apologized for emailing again so soon but was sure he was missing something. He said that clicking Apply to all items of this type didn't appear to be working. It certainly worked as expected for other pointer properties, but not for the appearance of the mouse pointer.
I tried it myself and sure enough, the Apply to all items of this type command did not change the pointer shape. My first thought was that it must be some kind of a bug. But then I realized that it isn't a bug at all... it's a feature. Every pointer option you can change on the Properties panel will be applied when you click the Apply to all items option--except the mouse pointer shape. To change the mouse pointer shape project-wide, first change the appearance of any mouse pointer on any slide. Then right-click the pointer and choose Use the current mouse pointer for all slides.
And now you know... the rest of the story.
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This info about the mouse pointers is very helpful. However, how do you change the mouse pointer to something custom? The Adobe Help files say that there should be a Browse menu item, but I can't seem to find that. Any help would be appreciated!
Posted by: Trevor | October 20, 2011 at 12:55 PM