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Adobe Captivate: Replacing PowerPoint Slides But Keeping the Audio

by Kevin Siegel   

I received an interesting email from a fellow Captivate developer who was in a bit of a pickle. The developer had imported a 60-slide PowerPoint presentation into Captivate and then added audio to each of the Filmstrip slides.

Just as he was about to Publish his finished project, he was told to use a different PowerPoint presentation. Mind you, it wasn't just that the imported presentation had changed and he needed to update it in Captivate. In that case, all he would have had to do is click the presentation's red "not in synch" icon on the library and the new PowerPoint content would have come into the Captivate project. In this instance, he was given a completely different presentation (the same audio was going to be used, but each slide visual was going to change).

Since the developer had already invested time importing the 60 audio files (files he was going to use on the replacement slides), he contacted me hoping he wasn't going to have to start over from scratch.

The bottom line is he didn't have to start over again and was able to reuse all of the imported audio files. Here's what I instructed him to do:

First, visit the Library and rename the audio files so the name of each audio file matches the slide where it was used. (To rename a Library item, right-click the item and choose Rename.)



In the image below, notice that I've renamed my audio files so the names match the slide that's currently using them (slide1Audio, slide2Audio, etc.).



Next, delete all of the imported PowerPoint slides. Because Captivate projects must have at least one slide, if your project only contains PowerPoint slides, insert a blank slide first (via Insert > New Slide From). Then delete all of the slides except the blank one.

The above step can seem extreme and nerve-wracking because you're deleting all of those awesome slides. But keep in mind you'll be replacing the deleted slides with new slides in just a moment.

Check out the Library. Even though you deleted the slides, the audio files are still in the Library. Notice the Use Count shows a bunch of zeros because none of the audio files are being used.



Import the new PowerPoint slides into the Captivate project (via File > Import > PowerPoint Slides).

Delete the blank slide you added earlier and, as a final step, drag the unused audio files from the Library onto their corresponding Filmstrip slides. 

 

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Looking for instructor-led training on Adobe Captivate? Check out our live, online, instructor-led Captivate classes.

eLearning: Add Some Character to Your Lessons

by Kevin Siegel   

Let's face it, some of the eLearning content you are required to create is a bit... shall we say, dry? A tad boring? A teeny bit heavy on the text and short on graphics?

One easy way to spruce up your eLearning content is to add characters (or guides). But where do you find quality images to use as guides? The good news is that both Articulate Storyline and Adobe Captivate offer some awesome, and most importantly, free Characters--out of the box.

Let's take a look at the Character features in both programs. While Characters have been around for several years in Captivate, and in both versions of Storyline, the images below are taken from the most recent versions of both programs, Captivate version 8; Storyline version 2.

Articulate Storyline 2

To insert a Character on a Storyline slide, open a slide and from the Insert tab on the Ribbon, click Character. You'll find two choices in the Character drop-down menu: Illustrated Character and Photographic Character.

 

In the image below, I've selected Illustrated Character, which opened the Characters dialog box. From here, you'll find multiple Characters, Expressions, and Poses.



I found the Expression options particularly cool... plenty from which to choose.



Shown below are Storyline's many poses. And if you look in the lower right of the dialog box, you'll even find three pose directions (Left, Front, Right).



And perhaps my favorite thing about Storyline's Characters is how easy it is to change the appearance of an inserted Character. In the Image below, notice that you can select a Character and totally change it to another character, change its Expression, Pose... even its Perspective. Simply awesome!



If you'd rather work with Photographic Characters, go back to the Character drop-down menu and choose Photographic Characters. As with the Illustrated Characters, you'll find multiple actors and poses.





Adobe Captivate 8

To insert a Character in Adobe Captivate, simply choose Media > Characters.



Similar to Storyline, Captivate's Characters dialog box presents you with several Categories, Characters, and Poses. (In the image below, I've selected a Character and Pose from the Business Category.)



If Captivate's Illustrated Characters work better for you, choose Illustrated from the Category drop-down menu and you'll be presented with four Illustrated Characters and various poses.



If you want to change the Character's pose in Captivate, you'll need to manually delete the Character from the slide and replace it with another (not as cool as Storyline's edit-on-the-fly technique, but perfectly functional).

Note: The Characters shown above aren't limited to Storyline and Captivate. You'll find many of the same Characters in Presenter.

 

Downloadable eLearning Characters

If you're not happy with the selection of characters that come with those programs, you'll find resources on the web offering thousands of eLearning characters. While you'll need to purchase those characters (typically in groups or packs), you are almost guaranteed to find the perfect character to fit within your scene. 

Two companies in particular jumped out when I went on an Internet search for characters: the eLearning Brothers and eLearning Art.

Between the two, the eLearning Brothers is likely the better-known company (orange anyone?). They call their Characters "cutout people," and they've got thousands of them. 

Over on the eLearning Art website, characters are referred to as "people cutout images." And like the eLearning Brothers, there are plenty from which to choose.

Another quick Internet search took me to eLearning.net where I found several free characters.

If you'd prefer stock photography for your eLearning projects, the eLearning Coach has compiled a handy list of resources. 

Lastly, check out AJ's article on free zombie characters... perfect for the season. 

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Looking for instructor-led training on Adobe Captivate? Check out our live, online, instructor-led Captivate classes. If Articulate Storyline is more your style, we've got you covered there too. 

Adobe RoboHelp: In Word We Trust

by Willam Van Weelden  

 

If you have attempted to create printed documentation with RoboHelp, there is a good chance you have run into a macro error. RoboHelp uses Word for printed documentation, and this error occurs if Word's security settings don't allow macros.

You can enable macros in Word, but that may not be enough. Some Help Authors receive unspecified errors when generating printed documentation even with macros enabled. To solve this, RoboHelp projects must be added to Word's trusted locations. I'll show you how to both Enable Word Macros and add projects to the trusted locations.

Enabling Word Macros

1. Start Word.
2. Click the Office button (Word 2007) or go to the File tab (Word 2010-2013).
3. Click Options.
4. Select Trust Center and then click Trust Center Settings.
   
5. From the Macro Settings area, select Enable all macros.
   
   
6. Close the Trust Center and the options.

Go to RoboHelp and generate the printed documentation. In most cases, RoboHelp will create a Word document out of your Help System. If RoboHelp still doesn't generate the printed documentation, you likely need to add your RoboHelp projects to Word's Trusted Locations.

Add RoboHelp Projects to Trusted Locations

1. Start Word.
2. Click the Office button (Word 2007) or go to the File tab (Word 2010-2013).
3. Select Options.
4. Select Trusted locations and then click the Add new location button.
   
5. In the Microsoft Office Trusted Location dialog box, click the Browse button and open the folder containing your RoboHelp projects.
6. Select Subfolders of this location are also trusted.
   
7. Click OK to close the Microsoft Office Trusted Location dialog box.
8. Close the Trust Center and the options.

Go to RoboHelp and re-generate the printed documentation.
 

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once a month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

Adobe Captivate 8: Custom Theme Colors

by Anita Horsley  

 

When working in Adobe Captivate, it's possible that you will need to use colors that match your corporate brand. In that event, you'll be happy to learn that Captivate 8 allows you to easily create custom Theme colors. And once you've created your Theme colors, you can apply those colors to just about any slide object or learner interaction.

The first step to creating custom Theme colors is to apply a Theme to a project. To do that, click Themes on the toolbar and select any of the available Themes (Captivate provides several Themes out of the box).

Each Theme comes with a collection of Theme colors. You can use those colors as is or customize them. To access the Theme's colors, click Themes and then click Theme Colors.

 

Scroll through the list of colors and select any one of the Themes you like.

 
To customize the Theme colors, click the Customize button.


Click the title of the current color theme and type your own theme name.

 

Click the color swatches to replace the existing colors with your own. (Note: If your company does not have a style guide and you're looking for some guidance when it comes to selecting Theme colors, you may consider using your website colors. You can use the eye dropper tool to match the colors used on your website.)

 

As mentioned earlier, you can apply your custom Theme colors to just about any selected Captivate object. For instance, if you insert a Smart Shape, the Fill area on the Properties Inspector will include your custom Theme colors.


You can use customized Theme colors on Interactions. There will be a Theme Style option at the right of the Interaction. If you click Custom, you'll have access to Theme colors.


    

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Looking for instructor-led training on Adobe Captivate? Check out our live, online, instructor-led Captivate classes.

Adobe Captivate Keyboard Shortcuts

If you've spent any amount of time at all using Adobe Captivate, it's a good bet that you've used some of the more basic keyboard shortcuts (copy/paste, save, etc). But check out the image below for some keyboard shortcuts you might not have known existed. (Feel free to right-click the image and save it to your computer for future use.)

Looking for Captivate training? Check out our online classes.

Free Captivate 8 Update Now Available

Adobe has announced a free update to its popular Adobe Captivate 8 software. The update fixes several bugs and includes some nice enhancements.

To get the update, choose Help > Updates from within the Captivate program. Once the update is installed, your new Captivate version will be 8.0.1.242.

Here's a partial list of what's new in the update:

• Responsive drag-and-drop interactions
• Google Maps enabled geo-location support
• Native app publisher
• Custom shapes and lines are now supported in responsive projects
• Streaming video support through embedded code in Web objects
• Success/Failure/Hint captions in quiz questions can now be replaced with smart shapes
• Swatches integration in color palette
• Symmetrical shapes
• The EXE publish option is back

More information.

Adobe Captivate: Adding Videos to eLearning

by Kevin Siegel   

You can add several types of video into a Captivate project, including AVI, MOV, and Flash Video (FLV or F4V). To insert a video, open or create a Captivate project and then choose Video > Insert Video to open the Insert Video dialog box. 

You have two choices when inserting video: Event Video (typically video that is expected to play on only one slide) or Multi-Slide Synchronized Video (video that is expected to play across multiple slides). Most developers elect to use Event Video since videos that are confined to a single slide are easier to control.

After you've made a decision between Event Video or Multi-Slide Synchronized Video, the next big decision is to load the video from a file that is already on your computer (by selecting On your Computer), or link to the video that is stored on a server (by selecting Already deployed to a web server, Adobe Media Streaming Service, or Flash Media Server).

If you choose On your Computer (which most developers do), you simply Browse to the video that's on your computer or network drive, open it, and the video will be inserted onto the slide. From there, you use the Properties Inspector to set the video's timing and other attributes. It's a clean process with one major drawback: when you publish an eLearning lesson containing video, the resulting output could be quite large. And large lessons take longer to open and view over the Internet than smaller lessons that don't contain video.

Instead of embedding the video in a Captivate project, you lower the size of the project and decrease load times for learners accessing your published content by linking to the videos that are stored on a server.

If you have a web server, you can upload the videos to the server in advance and simply copy/paste the URL to the video into the URL field. Your corporate IT can set you up with a web server or, if you're up to the challenge, you can create your own web server using free media server software.

If you don't have a web server, your server cannot handle large amounts of traffic, or you simply don't want to create your own server, a media service could be the way to go. Generally speaking, media services are servers available in the cloud that house your videos for you. When a learner watches your eLearning content and comes across a video you've added to a slide, the video is streamed from the media server to your learner. There are several pay-as-you-go companies/websites that provide media servers including Adobe Media Streaming Service, Wowza, Subsonic, and Plex.

I'd love to get feedback from you about this topic. I've created a quick poll that asks how you're using video in eLearning and, just as important, where you're storing the videos. You can take the poll here.

See also: Adobe Media Server 5 With Kevin Towes and a review on five of the top-selling media servers.

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Looking for instructor-led training on Adobe Captivate? Check out our live, online, instructor-led Captivate classes.

Adobe RoboHelp: Multilevel List Sub-Numbering

by Willam Van Weelden  

A few weeks ago I showed you how you can use multilevel lists to easily create complex lists with multiple levels. But multilevel lists are far more powerful than I could show you in a single article. This week, I'm going to expand on the multi-level list theme by teaching you how to add sub-numbers to lists: 

Sub-numbering is important for many procedures and legal documents. You simply can't have sub numbering in RoboHelp without multilevel lists, unless you want to manually type in all sub-numbers. But with multilevel lists, you control this behavior right from the style sheet!

To add sub-numbering to a Multilevel List, first Create a multilevel list. Then, on the Project Manager pod, double-click your style sheet to open the Styles dialog box. 

In the Styles dialog box, select your multilevel list. From the Apply Formatting To drop-down menu, choose a level that will use the sub-numbers.

 

Click in the Edit Style field and, from the Insert Level drop-down menu, choose 1.

 

Click OK to close the Styles dialog and save your changes.

And that's it. From this point forward, any of your multilevel lists can include sub-numbering (as shown in the image below):

 

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once a month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

Adobe Captivate 8: Watch for Large Cache Folders

I've written about Captivate's Cache folder in the past. In case you aren't familiar with it, a cached version of your project is created in the Cache folder every time you save your Captivate project. The cached projects can make the process of opening, saving and working on a project faster than what one experienced with older versions of Captivate. However, with Captivate 8, developers are complaining about the increased size of the Cache folder.

Those folks aren't imagining things. It looks like Captivate is creating more folders of each project than before. Adobe is aware of the problem and you can expect an update to Captivate that will fix the issue. In the meantime, you should manually backup your projects (to an external drive) and clear the Cache folder at least once a month (by clicking the Clear Cache button).

Adobe RoboHelp: Multilevel Lists

by Willam Van Weelden  

 

Multilevel lists are an often overlooked RoboHelp feature... a shame because multilevel lists are very powerful. As the name suggests, Multilevel lists allow you to create complex lists with multiple levels. For example: consider what you would have to do if you need a list that uses upper alphanumeric characters on the first level, lower roman on the second level and bullets on the third level.

 

You can achieve the numbering scheme shown above by using a standard numbered list, but you would need to assign the correct list styling to every list level. That's a lot of manual labor. And it's not easy to quickly change the list style, especially if you've applied the style manually across multiple topics.

With multilevel lists, you create a single style that can be used in multiple topics throughout a RoboHelp project. And best of all: you control everything through the style sheet, allowing you to change all the multilevel lists in a central location.

In this article I will show you how to create and use a multilevel list. I will focus on the basic settings first. With these basic settings you can use Multilevel Lists in your projects. In a future article I will show you some cool things you can do with multilevel lists.

Create a Multilevel List

1. On the Project Manager pod, double-click your style sheet to open the Styles dialog box.
2. In the Styles dialog box, right-click Multilevel Lists and chooseNew.
   
3. Enter a name for your list style and press [enter].
4. From the Apply Formatting To drop-down menu, choose Level 1.
   
5. From the Paragraph Style drop-down menu, choose a paragraph style. (I recommend using the Normal style so that the list uses the default topic formatting.)
6. From the List Style drop-down menu, choose a list style. (In my example I chose upper-alpha.)
   
7. Return to the Apply Formatting To drop-down menu and select and format other levels as needed. (In the sample list pictured at at the beginning of this article, I formatted the first three levels.)
8. When finished, click the OK button to save your changes.

The Multilevel list is now set up and ready to use.

Apply a Multilevel List To Topic Text

1. Open a topic and select some text.
2. Click the Create a Multilevel List tool. 
3. Select your Multilevel List in the Available Lists Styles field and then click the OK button.
   

Note: To change the level of a list item, click the Increase Indent  or 
Decrease Indent tools. 

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once a month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.