New to Captivate - opening saved project and slides appear locked

[davidh6534703]

Hi all,

I'm working on the trail of Captivate 9 to evaluate if it's right for our business. I'm working my way through the tutorials and saved a test project last night. On loading this morning the project has come up fine, but the slides I have created appear to be locked in some way, I can't access any of the text boxes, images or anything (almost like the image has been flattened) I can't seem to get back to a state where each layer is editable - What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance

Dave

[Lilybiri]

Hmm, I don't understand what happens for you. Are you sure the filmstrip is active (left docking station) and not the Master slide panel?

Can you show a screenshot of the timeline of a slide? Do you see 'lock' icons there?

[davidh6534703]

Hi Lily, thanks for your reply, I can lock or unlock the slide on the timeline controller without any problems, but it only shows the slide as one layer, not multiple as I would expect as I have text, photos and images within the slide, I can't select anything on the slide itself, text layers, image etc

[davidh6534703]

Here's a screen grab of the timeline

[Lilybiri]

There is no object on that slide at all? It looks like you merged everything to the background? This is not a normal behavior at all, will not happen automatically.

Was this slide created from scratch or is it a software simulation slide? Maybe show the slide itself as well? You are sure this is not the timeline for a Master slide? Did you check the left docking station: do you see the Filmstrip panel or the Master slide panel?

Which theme are you using, which master slide is used for this slide (look in Properties panel for the slide)?

[davidh6534703]

Thanks again Lily, I've obviously done something stupid due to my lack of experience with this software - I've created other projects since so it's obviously user error on my behalf!

All the best

[Lilybiri]

I want to help, if you can answer my questions? To merge objects to the background is not that easy, so I'm wondering what happened. Could learn from your answer, I learned almost everything about Captivate on these forums and by exploring.

If you don't want to answer: try to understand how the Themes are used. A theme consists of all object styles (look at the Object Style Manager under Edit menu), the master slides (choose Master slide under Windows menu) and the skin (Project, Skin editor).

Check the Preferences, and be sure to activate the backup, because it is not activated by default.

Most important panel is the Timeline (too bad it is hidden by default in the newbie UI). Long time ago I wrote an article about its functionality, although the colors have changed of the timelines, most of the tips are still valid. In Captivate 9 Effects timelines are integrated in the normal Timeline panel, which is a great improvement.

Tiny Timeline Tidbits - Captivate blog

What do you expect Captivate to use for?

[davidh6534703]

Hi Lily, thanks for bearing with me - I've had another look at the project and sorted it, as you suggested originally I think I must have been editing the master slide or something. I reopened the project and went to the property inspector and saw the slide was called title and I could go into Masterslide view. I did this and the film strip on the LHS changed so I could see all the individual tiles again. I was then able to view the timeline as before with all the individual layers editable.

I'm hoping to use Captivate to produce online training courses, but very early days yet and still at the evaluation stage. I'm a TV post-production editor by trade, so have considerable experience with photoshop and after effects, but v new to e-learning. Thanks for the link to the timeline tidbits!

Best regards

David

[Lilybiri]

Indeed, the master slides have also a timeline. But they are meant to be used as a sort of 'template' for normal slides. You have to think about what you need on many slides: maybe slide number (insert the system variable cpInfoCurrentSlide in a text container, using the X button in the Character part of the Properties), or a logo, or custom buttons...

Captivate has many features, most users underestimate its power totally because they don't take time to learn. That is so saddening. My first Adobe application was Photoshop (over 20 years ago). I imagine it took you some time to feel at home with all its amazing features? I still am learning more every day, same happens with Captivate! It is not as simple as Word or Powerpoint, believe me. You'll find a lot of use cases on my blog, a lot are a bit more advanced because my focus is on advanced/shared actions.

[davidh6534703]

Many thanks, I'll work my way through your blog posts - quick question. How much has Captivate changed since version 4/5 up to version 9? I've seen a lot of tutorials and blog posts etc relating to older versions of the app. Am I going to get confused by working my way through these then learning on v9?

[Lilybiri]

Captivate had twice a big change in the UI:

1. with Captivate 5: when the approach was more Adobe-like
2. with Captivate 8: where they left partially the general Adobe approach with workspaces and customisation (if you keep to Newbie UI).

Lot of my blog posts, because of the focus,  are still (almost) valid, and still visited like the one about Timeline. But the big changes with the User Interface would certainly confuse you if you watch older tutorials. Due to the frequency of releases, most books are put together very quickly, and not that useful at all except perhaps for some basics. Good practice when starting a project is IMO lacking in most books and training and that is very bad.

Tons of new features and enhancements were added between 4 and 9. As a consultant I often see work flows used from old versions that should be replaced by much quicker and better work flows due to those added features. Recently I recreated a file that had over 600 advanced actions and almost as many variables. The recreated file kept about 12 shared actions and 40 advanced actions remained, number of variables was about 1/10th of the original amount. Moreover everything was working, which was not the case in the original file.

Be patient, take time to learn and to explore.