July 7, 2009

Collaborative authoring using Captivate and PowerPoint

A lot of legacy learning content is in PowerPoint format and it is natural that e-learning course authors want to leverage or re-use this content. The earlier versions of Captivate allowed users to import their PowerPoint content into their Captivate projects. Now Captivate 4 goes much further- Cp4 now supports full round-tripping with the PowerPoint content.
It supports collaborative authoring with the SME’s who use PowerPoint. Detailed below are some key aspects of this powerful feature:

- You can import PowerPoint slides to Captivate, and then enhance these slides by adding audio, animations, video or other Captivate objects to each of the slides. In the meantime your co-author can keep editing the slides using MS PowerPoint. You can synch your Captivate project with the latest version of the PowerPoint slide deck using the ‘update’ feature (Window > Library and select the presentation, right-clik and do “update”) . The Captivate objects which you added earlier on-top of the initial version of the PowerPoint slides remain intact (while Captivate updates to the changes your co-author made using PowerPoint). The workflow becomes even more powerful if you keep this PowerPoint file in a shared location, eliminating the need of sending back the file to Captivate user.

- Note that this feature works for both .ppt and .pptx files. This is being clarified here as I saw many articles describing this as possible only in PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) files. .ppt and .pptx are handled in the same manner in Captivate 4.

- These posts give some more insight into the feature: PowerPoint Linked vs Embedded Import, Best practices for handling PowerPoint audio in Captivate, Correct dimensions for Power Point Import, PowerPoint On-Click Animations

- Captivate help is also a good resource for the feature.

- This tutorial gives a lot of details.

Posted by Sony Kadavan10:18 AM
  • Neil Eldin

    The Captivate files got outrageously big when I added voice to them and I was forced to break them down to bits and pieces…not the best option for online courses. Even the smaller files take 15-20 minutes to open and save. I have a top-of-the-line Dell desktop…so it is not the machine capability.Any suggestions on compressing files…or dealing with voice in a better way?Thanks…

  • http://www.instantetraining.com bhavin

    Sony,I like all Adobe products but somehow Adobe Breeze does not give me the flexibility to modify the flash player interface. I am looking to develop elearning courses but need my customized player design. Would you know if Adobe Breeze can be customized or if Adobe is planning to release a new version in the near future.Thanks!

  • Mary Charvat

    I’ve been using Powerpoint with Captivate for a long time in Captivate 1, and it’s always worked great, depending on the settings of my display during recording. My question to any blog contributor is, can you include an .html link in Captivate 4 and have it work? This capability has not been available, and I’m planning on upgrading. I’ve looked all around the Adobe site, but can find no info on this seemingly simple question.

  • Subscribe to RSS feeds
  • Loading

  • Categories

  • Archives

  • Authors

  • Recent Comments

    • ET: I’m an experienced editor but just started working on Premier. Easy program but the project crashed...
    • David Haskins: what is the latest version of Adobe Captivate? I have 6.01.240 but i don’t think that’s...
    • Els Vandenberghe: Is there a date set for the availability of the ACE Exam Captivate 6?
    • Avalon Foster Kelly: I’m having problems downloading the zip file – it says not found. I would love the...
    • Stacie DaPonte: I am trying to combine drag and drop with image rollovers. I have a small square in the bottom of...

  • Captivate & eLearning Videos

    Subscribe to Adobe eLearning on YouTube.

    Check out the latest eLearning Videos on AdobeTV