stencils in Adobe Captivate 5 – reuse and edit too…

In Adobe Captivate 5 master slide is a feature which allows author to share their common content and reuse across slides. The limitations with master slides (m/s) are that you cannot edit the m/s objects on slides. They can be edited only on master slides and any editing done will be reflected on all linked slides. 

But we assume authors want to create a slide from master slide and want to edit them also on respective slides. What do you do in these cases? Adobe Captivate 5 has a new feature – hidden but quite powerful. Internally we call it stencils – because the word stencils does not come anywhere in product. It will allow you to create slides based on stencil slides and allow you to edit the objects also on resulting slides. 

Watch this captivate demo by clicking on this link or image and read the steps below to use it.

Steps  –

1. Create a new project template. File -> New project -> Project Template
2. On first slide (or any slide) insert a highlight box and any other objects you wish.
3. Save the project template and close it.
4. Now create a new project using “project template” you just created. Say File -> New project -> Project from template and select the file you create earlier.
5. You get a Captivate project with slides coming from project template.
6. Select first slide and Choose Insert -> New Slide or the shortcut Shift+Ctrl+V
7. You get a slide with all the objects from previous slide. And you can edit them also.
8. Delete all the objects on the slide just created. This slide is blank.
9. Now select this slide and Choose Insert -> New Slide or the shortcut Shift+Ctrl+V
10. You still get the objects which were originally on it.

What is happening behind the scene?

Each slide in project template acts as stencils. And any slide created from this project template will have a reference to stencil slide. A slide created through “New Slide” from a selected slide containing stencil will also have reference to stencil slide. The stencil slide does not change by editing done on resulting slide. So even if you delete all the objects on resulting slide – stencil slide remain unchanged.

You might ask if allowing editing is the only thing which separate stencils with master slides then why not give this feature in master slide itself. This goes with the principle that master slide will be used to specify project or group of slide level objects. Make one change and all the slides are updated. Stencils are used to reuse objects on micro level so we allow editing on them. For better eLearning project development both can be used together to allow logical development of projects and to enforce some of the rules so that changes are handled well.