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Adobe Captivate: Saving Changes to Object Styles

by Kevin Siegel  

Object styles were introduced in Captivate 5. While they aren't necessarily the coolest features in Capitvate, Object styles provide one of the fastest ways to update the look and feel of slide objects project-wide.

As I've continued to teach Captivate to new eLearning developers, one of my challenges is ensuring that object styles are used efficiently. Changing the way a selected object looks is fast and easy via the Properties panel. However, using the Properties panel to change the appearance of a single object can be problematic. For instance, let's assume you are working with a project that contains upwards of 100 text captions. You can update the appearance of a selected text caption with a few clicks on the Properties panel. Unfortunately, you'll quickly discover that the remaining 99 captions have remained unchanged.

In the image below, the Style being used on all of the text captions in my project is the default style called [Default Caption Style]. 

I wasn't happy with the font or font size used in any of my project captions. I selected a caption on one of my slides and made changes using the Character group. 

The change took mere seconds. However, none of the other text captions took the change. In fact, it seemed that Captivate didn't appreciate the manual update on the Properties panel either. Check out the plus sign to the left of the style name in the Style drop-down menu.  

The plus sign isn't necessarily good or bad (I guess it depends on if you see the glass half-empty or half-full). The plus sign simply means that the selected object isn't using the original appearance (or intent) of the style. In other words, there's a style override that has been applied to the selected slide object. In this case, since I wanted all of my text captions to look like the one that I had manually formatted, the plus sign was bad.

Fortunately, it's not difficult to turn the chicken into some awesome chicken salad. With the updated text caption still selected, a quick click on the Save changes to Existing Style command instantly updated all of the text captions in my project. 

 

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Writing & Grammar: Can a Sentence End With a Preposition?

by Jennie Ruby  

Can I end a sentence with a preposition? Well, yes and no. The old school rule that you cannot end a sentence with a preposition has some validity, but it has also been mocked by personages high and low. Allegedly, for example, Winston Churchill said, "That is something up with which I will not put."

The practical solution is to try removing the preposition from the end of the sentence. If it changes the meaning of the sentence, put it back. If you can move the preposition to another place in the sentence, try that. If it sounds really odd and convoluted, put it back at the end. Finally, if you have a preposition at the end, and you try moving it and are pleased with the result, leave it in its new position. 

Here are examples to try out (or to simply try). As always,feel free to send your examples to us.

1. Our office does not use these old-style floppy disks any more. I think we should throw them out.
2. What will the meeting be about?
3. Whom am I speaking to?
4. I informed the client where the meeting is at.
5. Which tunnel are we going through?
6. This is a reminder that the east building is the one we are going to.

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After I read John M. Widen's entry for last week's challenge, I realized that no more need be said: 

1. black coffee cup
   • Please wash my black-coffee cup. Someone put cream in it.
2. cheap jug wine
   • If I decanted my wine into an inexpensive ceramic container, I might refer to it as my cheap-jug wine.
3. long range plan
   • My long range-plan for the rifle club was written on a roll of butcher paper.
4. orange sofa pillow
   • I chose lime green for the orange-sofa pillow. Of course I have no taste in colors or syntax.
5. free range chicken
   • Any poultry that escapes the rifle club might be called free range-chicken, or not.
6. broken CD tower
   • I should throw those old disks away instead of storing them in my broken-CD tower.
7. grape seed oil
   • It's easier to plant new vineyards if you lubricate the planter with grape seed-oil.
8. orange juice maker
   • While celebrating Holi in Mumbai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi) we bought drinks from the orange juice-maker.    
9. lower back pain
   • I have lower-back pain so I engaged a chiropractor who promised to lower back-pain.
10. red leaf lettuce
    • There is a head-forming red-leaf lettuce but I prefer the taste of red leaf-lettuce.

And here are the correct answers sent to me by Ginny Supranowitz:

1. black coffee cup
2. cheap jug wine
3. long-range plan
4. orange sofa pillow
5. free-range chicken
6. broken CD tower
7. grape-seed oil
8. orange-juice maker
9. lower back pain (I think lower-back could be hyphenated, but we all know what it means without the hyphen.)
10. red-leaf lettuce

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If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2007: Troubleshooting Pasted Slides

by AJ George 

Here's the scenario: You are an eLearning developer and receive a PowerPoint presentation from another party (a client, colleague, SME, etc). You've decided to paste some of the slides into another PowerPoint presentation following your own finely crafted master layouts. After you do this, you notice the formatting didn't quite take. Perhaps the bullets are positioned incorrectly. Maybe the title is incorrectly formatted. The whole thing is a big ol' mess. The cause is most likely that your presentation source did not use a master slide, or did not use standard content placeholders. Try this to clean up the mess.

1. Open the presentation into which you want to paste slides.
2. View the slides in Slide Sorter View by choosing View > Presentation Views > Slide Sorter.
3. Open the presentation from which you want to copy slides.
4. View the slides in Slide Sorter View by choosing View > Presentation Views > Slide Sorter.
5. From within that second presentation, copy the slide to be pasted by selecting the slide and pressing [Ctrl] [C] on your keyboard.

Note: If you are choosing more than one consecutive slide, hold down the [Shift] key while you select the first and last consecutive slides and then press the Copycommand. If you are choosing non-consecutive slides, hold down the [Ctrl] key and then press the Copycommand.


6. From View > Switch Windows select the presentation that is to receive the pasted slides.
7. In Slide Sorter view, click where you would like to paste the slides and press [Ctrl] [V]. By default, the pasted slides will follow the destination slide's layout. (However, if you're reading this, the layout is probably not looking quite right.)
8. With the pasted slides still selected, choose Home > Slides > Layout and then choose your desired layout. This should fix most of your issues.
9. If the content of your slides is still out of whack, it is probably because the original author used separate text boxes for text. To see what is on the slides outside the standard content placeholders, view the selection pane by choosing Home > Drawing > Arrange > Selection Pane. On the selection pane, locate the formatted Content Placeholder into which you would like your text to appear. Click the eye icon next to it to hide it. Any text that is still visible once you hide the Content Placeholder may be in one or several separate text boxes. You'll fix that next.
10. Select one of the individual text boxes on the slide and copy the content (highlight the text and press [Ctrl] [C]).
11. Delete the text box.
12. On the Selection Pane, click the eye icon next to the Content Placeholder to view it again.
13. Press [Ctrl] [V] on your keyboard to paste the deleted text box's content into the placeholder.
14. Repeat steps 10-12 for any remaining text boxes on the slide. 

Once you have placed all of the text into Content Placeholders, your slides will follow your master slides' layouts.

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Having a problem getting PowerPoint to behave? Email your issue. I may be able to help and then share the solution here.

Writing & Grammar: Hyphenating Adjectives (And Answers to Last Week's Challenge)

by Jennie Ruby  

Answers to last week's comma challenge, as presented byJing Ping Fan (Correct answers were also sent in by Susan Benson):

1. The tall and hollow trunk (or The tall, hollow trunk)
2. The upper right corner
3. A quick, easy lesson (or "and")
4. My blue suede shoes
5. The small down arrow
6. A loud and overcrowded stadium (or comma)
7. A small yellow icon
8. A large, cracked hubcap (or "and")
9. The large gray button
10. A wordy and uninteresting paragraph (or comma)

Are you surprised by some of these answers? For example, did you hyphenate upper right corner? Did you place a comma there? Did you want a comma between small and down for the small down arrow? Let's take a closer look at the items that were difficult.

The first thing to remember is that placing a comma between the adjectives means that you could have used the word andthere. When we try that on the expression upper right corner, we get "upper and right corner." When you read that out loud, it sounds a little odd. But more significantly, it implies almost a feeling that there are two different corners being discussed--an upper one and a right one. This is similar to the expression my blue suede shoes. If you say "my blue and suede shoes," it sounds as if you are talking about two different shoes. The word and truly does not work here, so a comma does not work, either.

Try that again on the expression "small down arrow." In describing such an arrow verbally, would you ever say "the small and down arrow"?  The word and does not work here, and for that reason, there should not be a comma betweensmall and down.

When I was a copyeditor on scientific journals, we used to talk about the "makes no difference" concept. The idea was that if it makes no difference in meaning whether you put a hyphen in versus leave it out, then leave it out. I think this concept works well on "upper right corner." Does it matter whether the reader perceives this as meaning the "upper rightcorner" (the upper one of the right corners) or the "upperright corner" (the upper right one of the corners)? No. Either way, the reader arrives at the upper corner on the right-hand side. Upper andright apply to the word corner equally. So there is no need to hyphenate upper and right to force the reader to join them together.

Contrast that with the expressions "blue laundry marker" and "high priced sedan." In both of these, the way you group the words does make a difference. Let's take out the spaces to show which two words are being read more closely together. If you read these aloud, you can hear that there is a big difference between a "bluelaundry marker" (you can use it only on blue clothes!) and a "blue laundrymarker" (it marks blue on any color clothes). Likewise, there is a difference between a "highpriced sedan" and a "high pricedsedan." The first makes sense, and the second is nonsensical.  What is a "pricedsedan"? In this last example, you do need to hyphenatehigh and priced to help the reader understand: a high-priced sedan.

Try this method on the following examples: If the first two words need to be read together, hyphenate. If the last two words need to be read together, leave it alone. And if it does not matter which two words are read together, also leave it alone.

1. black coffee cup
2. cheap jug wine
3. long range plan
4. orange sofa pillow
5. free range chicken
6. broken CD tower
7. grape seed oil
8. orange juice maker
9. lower back pain
10. red leaf lettuce

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If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

Adobe Captivate: Troubleshooting LMS Woes

by Lori Smith

A Captivate developer created a nifty eLearning lesson complete with a quiz, advanced actions and some nice navigation features. All she needed to do to wrap up the project was get the finished lesson posted to her LMS and ensure it reported correctly. And that, unfortunately, is where she ran into trouble. The lesson simply would not work once posted to the LMS.

The developer contacted me. While I had never used her LMS, I have successfully posted and tested several Captivate lessons to myriad systems. One thing I have learned while working with all of those LMSs... you never know what you're going to run into. And her LMS was a challenge. Round and round we went with different options and ideas, but the pesky lesson would not report properly.

Stymied, I appealed to the Adobe Captivate forum in search of anyone who had successfully dealt with her specific LMS. No immediate luck and I continued to scour other forums while waiting for my post to be answered. During that time, I had my client try different approaches. In the end, we figured it out. Here's what worked: I had the developer take baby steps. First, I had her create a new project that only contained a few slides. Then I had her adjust the reporting settings until it worked with her LMS. Next I had her add a button, and then more interactive objects. And then a quiz. The good news? We got the stripped-down version of the project to work. We used the same settings on the original project and it also worked on her LMS. 

As luck would have it, I then received a couple of suggestions in the Adobe forums from Rod Ward. His tips were great--starting with "try a very small, extremely simple lesson and go from there," just as we had been doing. Below is a summary of the points from Rod as well as the things we learned:

1. Don't wait until the deadline to integrate with your LMS. Do it sooner rather than later. And use a very small project to nail down settings and hopefully minimize integration issues.
2. Even if your LMS claims to be SCORM 1.2 compliant, you may need to try the 2004 setting to make things work.
3. Once a simple lesson works, add the features you need, one by one and continue to retest.
4. Ask your LMS vendor if they have a test portal. This saved us a lot of time in the end instead of having to rely on our LMS contact to upload/install content.
5. Have a conversation with your LMS vendor to see if they know of any integration tricks with Captivate--ours required the Complete flag, the Pass/Fail status did no good.
6. If you can, simplify your quiz total by having zero points for each question, but one button at the end with 100 points assigned.
7. If you have invisible/hidden scoring objects, be aware that they still count in the total points of the lesson.
8. Even if you don't have a quiz in your lesson, you may need to add a button that reports 100 points to the LMS.
9. If using the Complete/Incomplete status instead of Pass/Fail, be aware of what "Complete" means. A slide is only considered "Complete" if it runs to its timed end. If a user jumps from a slide using the playbar or a button/clickbox, the slide may not be considered Complete. If you have branching, you may skip slides and thus not 'complete' the whole lesson. You can temporarily turn your TOC (and or regenerate it so it includes ALL slides in the lesson) and run your lesson viewing the fewest slides possible. Use the check marks to see what slides were actually completed and use this percentage (or a tad lower) in the % field.
10. Be a little wary of Resume Data bookmarking. LMSs support this feature differently. Sometimes utilizing this in the Captivate can cause issues for the LMS. Test it before telling your boss bookmarking can absolutely be done--even if your LMS vendor swears it can.
11. Captivate will only allow your users to retake a quiz if they still have one or more attempts left on the quiz during a session (and they have not tried to review the quiz or jump outside the quiz at any time).  If a user clicks the Review Quiz button or leaves the quiz, the LMS may freeze the current quiz and not allow retakes.
12. If you are having trouble getting an accurate LMS completion score from a branched course, you might want to try the TickTOC widget. You can read more about it here.
13. Read and post to the Adobe Captivate forum--it's a wealth of free information.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Adobe RoboHelp: iFrames

by Kevin Siegel  

If you have a need to include PDFs in your Help system, you have a few options. You can create a link to the PDF (which will open the PDF once the user clicks the link) or you can import the PDF into the project (which will create a topic out of the PDF).

There is another, less known technique for including content in your Help System, and this technique actually embeds the content within a topic: iFrames. You can use iFrames (inline frames) to insert PDF files or HTML files within an HTML topic. 

Inserting an iFrame is simple:

1. Choose Insert > HTML > IFrame to open the iFrame dialog box.
2. Give the iFrame a name.
3. Click the browse button and select a URL, HTML file, or PDF file to link.
     
4. (Optional) Click the Border tab to set the iFrame's border options.
5. Click the OK button.

The iFrame won't look like much when viewed in RoboHelp's Design window. However, the results are awesome when you preview the topic. In the image below, the PDF is displayed within the iFrame. Unlike an image, the PDF within the iFrame is scrollable, you can zoom in and out for a closer look, jump between pages, and (coolest of all) use the Show Acrobat toolbar button to display the PDF in Adobe Reader so it can be printed, etc. 

 

To edit an iFrame, double-click it to change the name, the linked item, or the border. While in the Design window, you can also drag the frame handles to resize the frame.

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Looking to learn Adobe RoboHelp? We offer a live, online class held once each month.

Microsoft PowerPoint: Hide a Master Slide Logo

by AJ George 

A PowerPoint user approached me recently with an issue. She was given a PowerPoint template with a company logo on it. She was asked to remove the logo but could not. My first thought was to tell her to remove it from the master slides. However, she had already tried this and the logo appeared to be part of the actual background, even on the master slide. My assumption is that someone created the background (with the logo included) in another program, or took a screen shot of the background in PowerPoint and inserted it as a background image. Whatever the case, that logo was not coming off. Her best option was to cover it up.

If the background had been solid, this would have been an easy fix. She would have simply needed to insert a shape with the same fill color as the background (and no line) to cover it up. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The background was instead a repeating pattern. In the end, I came up with a solution that works (and may help you out too!) for repeating patterns, but not for randomized patterns.

For clarity, this is what I mean by a randomized pattern:

 

And this is what I mean by a repeating pattern:

 

While I have no solution for the first scenario above, here is how to cover up the logo in the second:

1. Working within the Master Slide view (View > Master Views > Slide Master), select the master slide containing the logo.
2. Draw a rectangle (or any shape, really) large enough to cover the logo (Insert > Illustrations > Shapes).
      
3. Right-click the shape and choose Format Shape.
4. From the Fill category of the Format Shape dialog box, choose Slide background fill.
      
5. From the Line color category of the Format Shape dialog box, choose No line.
6. Click the Close button.
7. Using the arrow keys, move the shape to a section of the slide with the same part of the repeating pattern.
8. Using your mouse, pull the resizing handles of the shape to make it taller and wider. (This will give you some wiggle room in capturing the background pattern.)
9. Right-click the shape and choose Save as Picture.
10. Save the image wherever your presentation is saved.
11. Delete the shape from the slide.
12. Insert the saved image onto the slide (Insert > Images > Picture).
13. Using the arrow keys, move the image over the logo and adjust the position until it matches the background pattern.
    
    
    The logo will now be invisible on all slides following that master slide.

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Having a problem getting PowerPoint to behave? Email your issue. I may be able to help and then write about the solution here.

Writing & Grammar: Adjectives Versus Adverbs

by Jennie Ruby  

Last week's challenge was a tough one. Several readers correctly punctuated the sentences but did not correctly identify which commas were optional. Sadly, only a minority of respondents got everything right. Here are the answers as presented by Larena Jackson. The goals were to correctly punctuate (or refrain from punctuating) these introductory phrases and to indicate whether the comma was optional or required.

1. In the morning she will leave the house by 7:30.  
   (optional comma as refers to time-In the morning, she...)
2. Over the rainbow is where the pot of gold should be.
3. After the long and boring meeting, we finally broke for coffee. (required-prepositional phrase more than 4 words)
4. After all, the boss is my best friend. (required-prepositional phrase acts as transition)
5. In 2009 the software was completely revised. (optional comma as refers to time-In 2009, the software...)
6. On the other hand, Bill might be better suited for the job than Bob is. (required- prepositional phrase acts as transition)

Respondent Carrie Noxon brought up one thing I did not mention in my column last week: some organizations may have an in-house style that makes the optional comma after a short introductory phrase mandatory.   She writes, "Our standard calls for a comma with introductory prepositional phrases. For us, it is always required. We also like the Oxford comma."

These two rules mean Noxon's organization uses "close punctuation," meaning that all optional commas are mandatory. As soon as I read her comment, I guessed that she must work at a law firm, and indeed, that turned out to be true. Legal writing has a great need for consistency and precision, and using more commas tends to help in that goal.

Correct Answers were sent in by:

• Larena Jackson
• Vera I. Sytch
• Carrie Noxon
• Lorna McLellan
• Michael Stein

Adjectives versus Adverbs

Adjectives describe nouns. Blue, tall, funny, long--these are all clearly descriptions of things: The blue screen, the tall coffee, the funny face, a long drive. Sometimes one adjective in front of a noun is not enough to fully describe or identify the item. Then we use two or more: The big old truck, the upper left corner of the screen, a small gray mouse. As soon as you have multiple adjectives in front of the noun, you need to ask whether you need commas between the adjectives. Here's how you tell: if you cannot reverse the order of the adjectives you do not need a comma between them.

Read this out loud:

The small brown bird

It sounds natural and normal. Now try reversing the adjectives:

The brown small bird

It sounds wrong or at least "funny." You do not need a comma between these adjectives because they are in the proper order.

If you can reverse the order of the adjectives, you need to ask a second question: can you place the word and between the adjectives. Here is an example where you can reverse the adjectives:

the small furious rodent

the furious small rodent

You can place the word and between the adjectives, and it sounds natural:

The small and furious rodent

Now, you decide whether to keep the word and or replace it with a comma:

The small, furious rodent

Here is this week's challenge: Decide whether you should place a comma between these adjectives. 

1. The tall hollow trunk
2. The upper right corner
3. A quick easy lesson
4. My blue suede shoes
5. The small down arrow
6. A loud overcrowded stadium
7. A small yellow icon
8. A large cracked hubcap
9. The large gray button
10. A wordy uninteresting paragraph  

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If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

Adobe Captivate: A Clean Break from PowerPoint

by Kevin Siegel  

Many Captivate projects begin in Microsoft PowerPoint. If you've never tried to import a PowerPoint presentation, you'll find it an easy process. All you have to do is choose From Microsoft PowerPoint (located at the right of the Welcome screen).

After opening the PowerPoint presentation, you will be presented with a dialog that will allow you to control, among other things, the size of the presentation when it is converted to a Captivate project.

At the bottom of the dialog box, you will find an innocent-looking check box next to Linked. If you leave this option selected and then complete the import process, the new Captivate project will maintain a link to the source PowerPoint presentation. 

From this point forward, you can edit the source PowerPoint presentation from within Captivate. If the source PowerPoint presentation is edited outside of Captivate, you can synch the source with the Captivate project with a simple click of your mouse.

The ability to create a link between the Captivate project and the PowerPoint presentation is great. However, you might want to set it up so that there isn't a link between the two applications. Changing your mind about linking is simple. On the Library (Window > Show Library), right-click the PowerPoint presentation and choose Change to "Embedded." 

Once embedded, you will no longer be able to initiate editing sessions of the presentation from within PowerPoint. In addition, you will no longer be alerted if somebody on your network makes changes to the presentation.

Should you change your mind about embedding the presentation within Captivate, the embedding process can easily be reversed. Still working on the Library, right-click the presentation and choose Change to "Linked." You'll be prompted to find and open the source document. Once opened, the link between the presentation will instantly be reestablished.

See also: Changing PowerPoint Slide Sizes for Importing into Captivate

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

 

Adobe Acrobat X: Adding Description Fields to Document Properties

by Barb Binder  

It's easy to ignore the Description tab of the Document Properties dialog box in Adobe Acrobat. You may never even think about it as you create, enhance and review your PDFs. But if you start amassing a large collection of PDFs, ignoring the Description tab would be a mistake. The Description fields are easily searched (both locally and online) and taking a few minutes to fill them out as you go will save you the headache of realizing a few years down the road that you should have been doing it all along.  

 

My personal rule is to make sure I get those fields filled out when I make a PDF. I set the fields up in advance for files created in InDesign, FrameMaker and Word so that they are saved with the source file and simply appear each time I create a PDF.

The general steps are the same for all three applications (and many others that I won't address here). Basically, it's:

1. Open up a native file in your source application.
2. Figure out where to enter the description fields.
3. Create the PDF.
4. Open the PDF in Acrobat or Reader.
5. Choose File > Properties > Description to view the fields.

For the specifics on setting this up in InDesign, FrameMaker and Word, read on.

Adobe InDesign

1. Open any InDesign document.
2. Choose File > File Info > Description (Mac & Win), fill out the description fields and click OK. 
3. Choose File > Export to create the PDF document.
4. Open Acrobat or Reader.
5. Choose File > Properties > Description to see the fields.

To see any additional fields, click the Additional Metadatabutton.        

Adobe FrameMaker

1. Open any FrameMaker document.
2. Choose File > File Info, fill out the description fields and then click OK.
3. Choose File > Save as PDF to create the PDF document.
4. Open Acrobat or Reader.
5. Choose File > Properties > Description to see the fields.

Microsoft Word

1. Open any Word document.
2. Choose File > Properties (Mac) or File > Prepare > Properties (Windows) and fill out the description fields.

On Word for Windows, the fields appear at the top of the document. If you want to see the dialog box, you have to click Document Properties, and navigate to the Summary tab. On a Mac, you are taken right to the dialog box.


3. Choose File > Save as PDF (Mac) or PDFMaker(Win) to create the PDF document.
4. Open Acrobat or Reader.
5. Choose File > Properties > Description to see the fields. 

I know and use all of the steps as described above. Even so, yesterday I found myself with 50+ PDFs that I had just created. I was ready to send them off to the client and realized that I forgot to enter the description fields... on all of them! If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, check out next week's article: Adobe Acrobat X: Adding Description Fields to Multiple PDFs.

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Need to learn Acrobat? Barb's next Acrobat class is April 25. Come learn the basics in just two days.