3 Tips for Better PowerPoint Workflow in Adobe Captivate
April 10, 2012
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3 Tips for Better PowerPoint Workflow in Adobe Captivate
April 10, 2012
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Creating a course using Microsoft PowerPoint and importing and enhancing it using Adobe Captivate is a very popular and useful workflow. There are cases where we can achieve smooth results if we follow some best practices when creating the eLearning course using PowerPoint. Of course there are best practices after importing it inside Captivate as well… 🙂 Let’s discuss how these can make a difference.

Decide the dimensions…

The dimensions of a PowerPoint file is usually calculated in inches and Adobe Captivate works in pixels. For an existing PowerPoint file, you need to figure out the dimensions in pixels. I usually do a simple math, most of the Windows systems have 96dpi and most of the Macs have 131 dpi. How do I find it out that? Very simple, create a one slide PPT and set the dimension of the slide to be 10×10 inches. Create a new project using this PowerPoint file in Adobe Captivate and in the ‘Select Slides dialog’ which pops up, it would show you the dimensions in pixels… I’m sure you can do the math now about the dpi… 🙂

Now that you know the dpi and based on your planning for the Captivate’s project, you set the slide dimension in PowerPoint accordingly. For example, my Captivate project dimension is 1024×768 and my system’s dpi is 96dpi, then my PowerPoint slides should be 10.6×8 inches… Simple, right?

 

What about the audio?

Many times we see people having issues with getting the audio from PowerPoint to Captivate. If there is a narration you have recorded inside PowerPoint and import that PPT in Captivate, it works fine. But, if you have imported an audio file in PowerPoint slides, make sure that the audio file you are importing is in the same location as the PPT file. Why do we need to do this? Because, as you all know, every slide is a SWF in Captivate and it looks for the audio file at the same location as the source PPT file, so next time when you have issues with imported audio inside a PPT, just check for this little trick and see if it helps 🙂

File size… File size…

As most of you are aware, when we import the PowerPoint file, we can either link it or embed it in Adobe Captivate. We can also selectively import the slides instead of importing all of them. In cases where you are selectively importing and embedding the PowerPoint content, you have an option to reduce the Captivate file size by compacting the PowerPoint file. How do we do that? Very simple, right-click on the PPT item in Captivate Library and select Compact. It removes all the slides which were excluded during import. Be careful when you do this step, as it cannot be undone.

Hope these tips help…

Creating a course using Microsoft PowerPoint and importing and enhancing it using Adobe Captivate is a very popular and useful workflow. There are cases where we can achieve smooth results if we follow some best practices when creating the eLearning course using PowerPoint. Of course there are best practices after importing it inside Captivate as well… 🙂 Let’s discuss how these can make a difference.

Decide the dimensions…

The dimensions of a PowerPoint file is usually calculated in inches and Adobe Captivate works in pixels. For an existing PowerPoint file, you need to figure out the dimensions in pixels. I usually do a simple math, most of the Windows systems have 96dpi and most of the Macs have 131 dpi. How do I find it out that? Very simple, create a one slide PPT and set the dimension of the slide to be 10×10 inches. Create a new project using this PowerPoint file in Adobe Captivate and in the ‘Select Slides dialog’ which pops up, it would show you the dimensions in pixels… I’m sure you can do the math now about the dpi… 🙂

Now that you know the dpi and based on your planning for the Captivate’s project, you set the slide dimension in PowerPoint accordingly. For example, my Captivate project dimension is 1024×768 and my system’s dpi is 96dpi, then my PowerPoint slides should be 10.6×8 inches… Simple, right?

 

What about the audio?

Many times we see people having issues with getting the audio from PowerPoint to Captivate. If there is a narration you have recorded inside PowerPoint and import that PPT in Captivate, it works fine. But, if you have imported an audio file in PowerPoint slides, make sure that the audio file you are importing is in the same location as the PPT file. Why do we need to do this? Because, as you all know, every slide is a SWF in Captivate and it looks for the audio file at the same location as the source PPT file, so next time when you have issues with imported audio inside a PPT, just check for this little trick and see if it helps 🙂

File size… File size…

As most of you are aware, when we import the PowerPoint file, we can either link it or embed it in Adobe Captivate. We can also selectively import the slides instead of importing all of them. In cases where you are selectively importing and embedding the PowerPoint content, you have an option to reduce the Captivate file size by compacting the PowerPoint file. How do we do that? Very simple, right-click on the PPT item in Captivate Library and select Compact. It removes all the slides which were excluded during import. Be careful when you do this step, as it cannot be undone.

Hope these tips help…

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Anonymous
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014

“Why do we need to do this? Because, as you all know, every slide is a
SWF in Captivate and it looks for the audio file at the same location as
the source PPT file,,,”

This is pure laziness on Adobe’s part.
They could easily prompt the user to indicate whether the audio is
embedded or audio object, and prompt the user to navigate to the
appropriate directory if the user indicated audio object. They haven’t
fixed this for Captivate 7.

I can’t wait till we migrate to Articulate Storyline.

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Anonymous
Oct 25, 2012
Oct 25, 2012

I followed the above slide dimension tips and all appeared to work well. However, when I worked on the same presentation on my home computer and tried to change a slide it changed the dimensions when posting to Captivate, even though it was the original PowerPoint slides. I am using the same programs at home and work, yet the PowerPoint at work imported to Captivate as 766 x 575 and the same PowerPoint at home imports as 541 x 406. The slides are set up as 8.33 x 6.25. I am working on a Mac in both locations. Ideas?

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Anonymous
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012

Hi,
When I import a powerpoint presentation to captivate (we have version 5.0), I could only see the title on each of the slides – and not the entire presentation. I have tried to import a number of times, but it’s the same issue and I don’t know how to fix it. Hope someone could help me.
Thanks in advance.

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seanh27970640
Sep 1, 2020
Sep 1, 2020
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Anonymous
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I have the same problem on some projects. I haven’t determined the cause… yet.

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