ADOBE CAPTIVATE 2017: Workaround for the Spelling Bug

by Kevin Siegel, COTP

Did you know that Captivate has a spell check feature? Yes? No? Feel free to admit it if you didn't know... you're among friends here. You'll find the spell check feature  easily enough by choosing Project > Check Spelling.

 

I'm not saying that the Check Spelling feature is anything to get overly excited about but I strong recommend using the utility prior to publishing. I'm betting you'll be glad you did when a double word or two is flagged (double words are one of the hardest things to catch in a project that you've been starring at for weeks, if not months).

 

When running the Check Spelling feature, you'll see the dialog box shown below that flags for double words and spelling errors.

 

 

Of course, if you run the Check Spelling feature in Adobe Captivate 2017, you're in for a bit of a nasty surprise. Check out the mess that appears in the Check Spelling dialog box.

 

 

 

 

Fellow Captivate developer Sarah Joyce sent me an email a few weeks ago. She said she was seeing "background HTML" when running spell check. I opened a few of my projects so see if I could find anything out of whack. At first, nothing. But then, much to my horror, I saw the same thing as Sarah.

 

I heard from some of the good folks over at Adobe that it's a documented bug that will soon be fixed. If your project includes Slide Notes, you'll see the code shown in the image above. If you don't have Slide Notes, the spell check feature works as expected.

 

While we wait for Adobe to release a patch for Captivate that will fix the spell check bug, I've got three workarounds for you (warning, you're not going to like the first two).

1. Ignore bad behavior. You can ignore the HTML code while spell checking. However, there could be a lot of code and it's likely going to take a lot of time to spell check.
2. Delete. Go slide by slide and delete all of the Slide Notes in the project. This option works but now the Slide Notes are gone. Noooo! Don't do it... you'll likely need the Slide Notes down the road.
3. Round Trip It! Export the project text to Microsoft Word, run a spell check there (along with a grammar check), and then import the edited Word text back into Captivate.

What's that you say, you didn't know Word and Captivate have an awesome working relationship? Check this out:

Choose File > Export > Project Captions and Closed Captions. Select a "Save As" destination for the document and then click the Save button. You'll get the alert dialog box below. Click yes and the Captivate project text will open in a Microsoft Word table.

 

 

Highlight the Updated Text Caption Data column and run Word's spell-check (from the Ribbon, Review > Selling and Grammar). When finished, save and close the Word document.

 

 

Back in Captivate, choose File > Import > Project Captions and Closed Captions. Find and open the Word document you were just editing and all of the text you edited in Word will update in Adobe Captivate. How's that for the ultimate bug zapper?

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If you're looking to learn Adobe Captivate, check out these live, online, and 100% interactive Captivate classes.

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.