Adobe Captivate 5/5.5: Troubleshooting Cranky Software

by Kevin Siegel  

By this point I've created hundreds upon hundreds of eLearning projects using Captivate. In all that time, Captivate has remained very stable for me (very few crashes and zero corrupt projects). Nevertheless, I've received some emails over the last few weeks from Captivate developers who were having issues with Captivate crashing, running slowly or otherwise behaving erratically. In the vast majority of the cases, the following resolved the issues.

Editing over a network drive: Captivate projects simply cannot be edited over a network drive. Backing up your projects to a network drive is a great idea. But if you open a project and then proceed to edit it over a network drive, the project will behave erratically, work slowly and, sooner or later, become corrupt. Take my advice (and the advice of any developer who has lost a project), stay clear of your network drive. If your project is currently on a network drive, first copy the project to your local drive and then edit it.

Run as administrator. If you are using Windows Vista or 7, and you are working locally but Captivate is still behaving badly, try running the software as an Administrator. You can Captivate as an Administrator by right-clicking the Captivate application icon and choosing Run as administrator.

Virus Scanners: Many virus scanners scan your hard drive 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. The scanners are well-meaning but can rob your computer of performance and block all kinds of processes... even Captivate processes. I'd suggest stopping your virus scanner while you're working within Captivate. Instead, schedule the virus scan during hours when you aren't asking your computer to perform intense processes (like producing a Captivate project).

Clear Captivate's Preferences: If Captivate is performing strangely, you can delete the Preferences folder and see if that shakes things up. Close Captivate, find the Preferences folder on your computer (see below) and then restart Captivate. The Preferences folder will be recreated when Captivate starts. If you are nervous about deleting the Preferences folder, make a backup of the folder first and copy it to a trusted location. Then delete the original.

Note: The Preferences folder won't be actually be called "Preferences." Instead, it will have the same name as your version of Captivate. For instance, since I have both Captivate 5 and 5.5 on my computer, I have two Preferences folders, one called "Captivate 5," the other called "Captivate 5.5."

Here is where your Preferences folder can be found (it's a bit different dependent upon your operating system and version):

Windows 7: C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Local\Adobe\Adobe Captivate   

Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe Captivate

Mac:  /Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Captivate 

See also: Captivate's Cache Feature 

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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).

Comments

[Alice Acker]

Good information, Kevin. Deleting Preferences is my go-to fix, and works like a charm for a myriad of problems.

[Ocdharma]

I deleted my preferences, and it worked like a charm! :)

[Mary Margaret Dent]

Great info - regarding working locally (no editing on a network drive), should you also put any media that is included in the course on your c drive or is it okay to keep it on the network and insert from there?

[Kevin Siegel]

Hi Mary. As far as I know, it is not necessary for assets to also be local. When you import most of the assets into a Cp project, the assets are copied into the project and Cp maintains a link to the source file for ease of global updates. There is no need to have everything local... on the project file itself has this requirement.

[Lou Douglas]

Hi Kevin
Useful information as always. Do you think deleting the preferences could help with the missing tap sound for recorded typing? I used to hear the key tap on recording typing in Cp4 but since upgrading to Cp5, there's silence, even in new projects.

[Kevin Siegel]

Are you sure you haven't disabled the tap sounds (they are Publish settings)?

[Lou Douglas]

Hi Kevin, thanks for the reply. I've made sure that the tap sound settings are selected:

Settings: Keystrokes and Hear Keyboard Taps Sounds both selected

Publish Settings: Play tab audio for recorded typing is selected.

Still no key tap sound.

[juan]

hi Kevin i have a problem trying to run captivate when i start the program it opens up fine then it gives me the captivate has stopped working windows 7is searching for a solution.i have tried to delete the preferences folder and it didn't work please could u help

[Kevin Siegel]

Lou, that's very strange. Email me your specs (OS, issue, etc) and I'll forward this to the Captivate engineers on your behalf. ([email protected])

[Kevin Siegel]

Juan, this could be an installation issue. The person who installed the software should login as you and install. Installers using different permissions can cause this issue for users with limited permissions. Another place to look could be a virus scanner of some kind. One final thing, try running Cp as an Administrator (right-click and Run as Admin if you are using Windows 7).

[Natacha]

I've added images that are clearly visible on the stage, yet when I preview or publish they do not appear. This is also happening with my sound file on one of my pages. How can I fix this?