A slide in a Captivate project is the canvas on which you create your story. This is the place where you put the content that you want your users to consume. This section will get your started with how to add, edit, delete, hide, and lock slides in your project.
Assets and samples
The procedures in this document require you to use assets such as images and sample Captivate project files. You can choose to use your own assets and samples. However, it is recommended that you download and extract the following zip file to your computer:
Add slides to a project
- In the create-project-slides folder, navigate to the samples subfolder and open:
create-project-slides.cptx
Note: It is not mandatory that you download the project file that ships with this tutorial. You can still follow along with the steps in this procedure. However, you will need to create a new project in Captivate. - In the Filmstrip, navigate to the first slide.
- Click Slides on the toolbar.
The drop-down list displays the different types of slides that you can add to your project. - From the Slides drop-down menu, choose Content Slide.
A new slide is added immediately after the first slide.
Edit slides
You can edit the properties of a slide. For example, you can add a background color or background image to a slide.
Let’s change the background color of the new slide and add a caption to the slide.
After this procedure, the slide in our project will look like:
- In the create-project-slides folder, navigate to the samples subfolder and open:
create-project-slides.cptx
Note: It is not mandatory that you download the project file that ships with this tutorial. You can still follow along with the steps in this procedure. However, you will need to create a new project in Captivate. - In the Filmstrip, navigate to the second slide.
- Click Properties on the right side of the toolbar.
The Properties Inspector displays the properties for the chosen object on the slide. - In the Properties Inspector, ensure that the Style tab is selected.
- Click the Background drop-down list and choose Custom.
- Click the down arrow in the Solid Fill box and then choose the color light blue.
Let’s also give this slide a caption. This helps to identify the slide in the Filmstrip. - Click inside the text box at the top of the Property Inspector.
- In the Caption text box, enter the following text:
Samantha
Hide, lock, and delete slides
Hide slides if you want to keep them in your project but don’t want to show them in the final output. This is useful if some slides are currently work-in-progress but you want to publish your project.
However, if you’re sure that don’t want to keep certain slides in your project, you can delete them.
Also, if you are done working on a slide, lock the slide to ensure that you (or a colleague) don’t inadvertently make changes to the slide.
Let’s work with the slides in our project.
- In the create-project-slides folder, navigate to the samples subfolder and open:
create-project-slides.cptx
Note: It is not mandatory that you download the project file that ships with this tutorial. You can still follow along with the steps in this procedure. However, you will need to create a new project in Captivate and add some slides to the project. - In the Filmstrip, navigate to the slide titled True / False.
- Right-click on the slide and choose Hide Slide.
Notice that the slide is still visible in the Filmstrip but its dimmed out. - Next, navigate to the slide titled Multiple Choice – 2.
- Right-click on the slide and choose Delete.
This time, the slide is deleted from your project. Of course, you can use Captivate’s Undo feature to get the slide back if you did that accidentally.
The slide titled Matching is done so let’s lock it. - Navigate to the slide titled Matching.
- Right-click on the slide and choose Lock Slide.
The lock icon displayed in the upper-right corner of locked slides acts as a visual cue.
Note: If you need to make changes locked slides, you will need to first unlock the slide.
To quickly unlock a single slide, click the lock icon.
Duplicate, copy, and drag-and-drop slides
You often need to create copies of slides that you want to replicate at another point in the project. You can even copy slides in one Captivate project and then paste them into another project.
Or, instead of using the copy and paste feature, you can duplicate slides to place the duplicates immediately after the original slides.
You can also use the drag-and-drop feature to quickly move slides around in a project.
Let’s see how these operations work in Captivate’s Filmstrip.
- In the create-project-slides folder, navigate to the samples subfolder and open:
create-project-slides.cptx
Note: It is not mandatory that you download the project file that ships with this tutorial. You can still follow along with the steps in this procedure. However, you will need to create a new project in Captivate and add some slides to the project.
First let’s copy the slide titled Multiple Choice – 1 and paste it after the slide titled Matching. - In the Filmstrip, navigate to the slide titled Multiple Choice – 1.
- Right-click on the slide and choose Copy.
- In the Filmstrip, navigate to the slide titled Matching.
- Right-click on the slide and choose Paste.
The copied slide is pasted after the currently selected slide.
Next, we’ll duplicate the slide titled Multiple Choice – 1. - In the Filmstrip, navigate to the slide titled Multiple Choice – 1.
- Right-click on the slide and choose Duplicate.
The duplicate is placed immediately after the original slide.
Finally, let’s move the slide titled True / False to just before the slide titled Quiz Results. - In the Filmstrip, navigate to the slide titled True / False.
- Click on the slide, drag the slide down the Filmstrip and drop it just before Quiz Results slide.Note: The duplicate, copy-and-paste, and drag-and-drop features in Captivate can be performed on a single slide or on multiple slides. To do this on multiple slides, multi-select the slides in the Filmstrip using the Shift+click or Ctrl+click key combinations.
Preview and Publish
In this section, we’ve covered some very easy and extremely useful slide operations in the Filmstrip.
Let’s preview our progress.
Click Preview on the toolbar and then choose Project to preview the entire project.
If you see something missing, you can go over the appropriate section in this article and make the required updates to your project.
If everything looks fine, let’s publish the project.
- In the toolbar, click Publish and then choose Publish to Computer.
The Publish To My Computer dialog box is displayed. - In the Publish as drop-down list, ensure HTML5 / SWF is selected.
- In the Output Format option, ensure HTML5 is selected.
- Click Publish.
Thank you!
Between the resources from the Adobe Captivate Team, YouTube, and LinkedIn Learning I’ll have my first course complete in the next few weeks.
Wondering why the Branching view is ignored in this article? It is another way to manage project slides but seems to be forgotten.
Would be nice to upgrade this post, now that Overlay slides have been added in CP2019. It is not clear to all users that that type of slides in an interactive object do not behave like normal slides.
Good tutorial.
Thank you for providing the assets and encouragement to hone our skills. This will be a great resource for me but also for friends I have who are just starting out with Captivate.
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