

I’m building a ‘Jeopardy’ style quiz for our users as a fun way to test their knowledge before taking on a much more rigorous certification test.
I’ve got the basic functionality working, but there are a couple things that are totally vexing me.
I’m trying to modify and place the Timeout Caption. On my question master slides, it’s not there as something I can click on and modify, I’ve got “Review”, “Incomplete”, “Correct/Continue” and “Incorrect/Continue” smart shapes (along with the normal forward/back/submit button stuff) from the Veracity theme with some modest color tweaks, but no “Timeout”. I found it in the Object Style Manager, but I don’t seem to have as many options in formatting my Timeout Caption. I can’t, for example, give it rounded corners or a reflection because there are no shapes to choose from (like there are under Properties on the slides themselves), and since it’s not on my question slide master, I can’t globally place it where I want. The only way I have access to it is if I click “Show Timeout Caption” in each slide’s Quiz Property. I would love to not have to then manually place the Timeout Shape and set the box to rounded corners on every single slide.
I’m also going to use a question pool per category, and if I can’t figure out where to place and format that Timeout Caption globally, I’m going to have to manually format and place the shape on somewhere around 125 slides.
I must be missing something obvious, because it seems inconceivable to me that there’s not a way to set this particular item on a master question slide.
Thanks!
Using Captivate 2019.
After some exploring I had posted a long answer, but the site crashed when I posted the answer. I will try again.
To me this is a clear BUG, and will try to explain why. Sorry that Timeout has never been treated in one of my (45) blog posts about Quizzing, missed it. Reason is probably that I don’t use that feature because I prefer custom solutions for restricting time.
Little bit of Captivate history to explain my claim for a BUG. Since shapes appeared with version 6 they have taken over the old text captions as text container in many situations. That is also the case for the embedded automatic messages on quiz slides. Contrary to other SFH messages there is no way to revert to captions on quiz slides anymore in Preferences. That also means that several object styles in Quizzing category, Captions have no sense because they are never used.
Whereas the style of a text caption includes both formatting of text, background and shape of the box, that is NOT the case for shapes. The shape itself is not part of the object style as you experienced. Each shape also needs full formatting for setup as button, but that is off topic.
For the other messages on quiz slides or in question pools that is not a problem – you pointed this out as well – because the shape itself can be styled on the master slides. However for the Timeout message I couldn’t find a way to make it visible on the master slides, that is a bug.
Moreover the new Copy/Shape appearance of version 11 is not valid for the embedded messages on quiz slides. You don’t have control over them because the actions to make them appear are embedded as well. This message cannot be linked to the Success/Last Attempt neither since it is independent of submitting an answer.
It may be possible to create a custom solution using a shared action, not sure if you would like that.