What is too large?

[Guest]

Captivate hangs every time I try to import a project of 10 slides. I have over 250 slides in my project. Do I need to split things up?

[Captiv8r]

Welcome to our community, Ginger

I've seen others report back that after talking to Adobe Technical Support, they were advised that projects should be kept to about 50 megs. My own advice that I offer is to try and keep them between 50-65 slides as a very general and broad upper limit.

Yes, if you have 250 slides, you should definitely consider splitting things up.

Cheers... Rick

[CatBandit]

Hi Gingere,

I agree with most of "Captiv8r"'s comments, but I believe that when Tech Support puts a 50 Mb limit on, they are choosing an arbitrary number based on their assumptions of what the "average" resources of the user's development machines might be ...

And that is the point that is often missed when discussing what is "too big" - it is really about resources. Now, about that "splitting things up" idea; if your PPT is 250 slides, you needn't split up the PPT. Just open it as a new "Power Point Import" project, but just select the first "X" slides for importing ... Captiv8r's 50 slide suggestion is as good a place to start as any. If you have trouble with that route, try fewer slides.

BUT keep in mind that many users seem to experience troubles with specific objects (animations or transitions perhaps, and certainly Flash SWFS, images, and other inserted objects. So if the import fails, it may not be the "size" at all, but the inability of Captivate to handle some objects (corrupted or otherwise) during the import process.

~respects
Larry

[Guest]

Thank you so much for your help. I actually don't have any Powerpoint slides but my Captivate slides do number over 250 and I see the project is about 600MB. To add to my problems, the published project is skipping most of my questions slides. I'll split up my project and maybe solve both problems. THanks!

[Captiv8r]

Hi again Ginger

If you need any assistance with splitting things, I've got a small demo that may help you out. You may view it by clicking here.

Cheers... Rick

[CatBandit]

Hi again Gingere,

Sorry I misunderstood about it being a PPT conversion. In your original post, you said ...

quote:

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Captivate hangs every time I try to import a project of 10 slides.

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... and the word *import* made be interpret your situation wrongly. No matter, as the actual problem remains unchanged.

I couldn't access the link to "Capti8r's" demo - - the site is probably down for maintenance or something this morning - but am sure it will helpful if you need guidance in creating multiple files from one larger one.

My earlier comment regarding corruption in an object causing the failure of an entire project does still apply - especially to Question slide objects. So if the problems continue when splitting the project, try copying the file to a new name, remove the Question slides one at a time, and try running it again. It is very possible that a bad Question slide could be the culprit, or at the least, is aiding in the problem. Have a great day!

Larry

[Captiv8r]

Hi Larry

quote:

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I couldn't access the link to "Capti8r's" demo - - the site is probably down for maintenance or something this morning

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Odd, it pops right up for me. Not sure why it's not working for you. Then again, my sites are typically hosted across the big drink in the UK. Maybe that has something to do with it.

Cheers... Rick

[CatBandit]

Rick, it works fine for me too, now. Don't know why it wouldn't earlier this morning but I figured something was problematic with the server because I didn't get a 404 error - just a blank page - like timed out or something.

L

[Guest]

That's good to know. Since my project is showing upgraded features in our software, I made a title slide that allows them to click a button and view the section that interests them. So, I actually don't have an end. I just keep returning the user back to the opening slide. To reduce my project size, my plan is to link each button to separate projects. Do you mind if I ask if you forsee any problems with that?

[Guest]

I hate to tell you this...even tho I am splitting the project up into "legs" with fewer slides in each, the file sizes are just as big as the original project....I'll try cutting/pasting the smaller ones into new files....

[Captiv8r]

Hi Ginger

If you are working with copies of the original, that is normal behavior. I believe there is an issue with Captivate where it doesn't always dump any deleted information. So perhaps you had a 200 slide project and dumped 150 slides. The actual file size of the .CP file will likely remain the same. But the output file sizes will be lots smaller.

I've seen others report that clicking File > Save As... and saving to a new file name will shrink the .CP file, but I've never been able to make it work successfully. Maybe I'm simply pressing my tongue to the wrong cheek when I click Save.

Cheers... Rick

[CatBandit]

I agree. To my knowledge, the only way to get rid of those unwanted (previously deleted) objects in the file is to create a 2nd project of the same dimensions, then, with both projects open, do a Windows "Copy - Paste" of slides (with their objects) from the "old" file into the "new" project.

Depending on your available system resources and version of Captivate, you may have to do this one, or just a few, slides at a time. And if you are including Question slides, the copy-paste won't work at all in pre-version 3 Captivate, so those will have to be recreated manually.

~best
Larry