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utamyb
Participant
March 1, 2017
Answered

"Effect file not valid" for Captivate 8 files converted to Captivate 9

  • March 1, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 564 views

My office upgraded from Captivate 8 to Captivate 9 back in December and we have converted our active projects to Captivate 9. We use the Glow Twice effect for our navigation buttons. We were able to find the effect in the Other Effects folder, but for some reason we are unable to add the effect to new objects. If we attempt to add the effect to an object, we get "Effect file not valid". If we copy/paste an existing button that already has the effect, the new button has the effect and it works. But the issue is that this only solves our problems if all we need is buttons with that effect. We can't use that effect for any new objects.

I did quite a bit of researching on forums and couldn't really find anyone with my exact issue. I did use the workaround to open a new Captivate 9 file, copy the object to the new file, add the effect there, and then copy it back to the converted file and it worked. But you can see where this might become cumbersome. And it's not limited to just the Glow Twice effect. We can't use any of the Other Effects on any object unless we do the workaround.

I cleared my cache and cleaned my Preferences. I tried opening a new project and copy/pasting the slides over but that didn't work. I also tried opening a new project and inserting a couple of slides and copy/pasting just the objects over and that works as long as I'm using the default master slides. Once I copy over the master slide layouts from the converted file to the new file, I can no longer apply effects from the Other Effects folder. If I open a new Captivate 9 project and insert an object, I can add any Other Effect I want.

It gets even weirder. Sometimes it will let me add an effect from an object I copied over. If I delete the effect, then I can no longer add any Other Effects. I get the Effect file not valid error. I'm completely stumped. I'd like to go back to my team and say "This is the fix and this works every time" rather than "Try this and hopefully it works this time." Do I need to have the IT team reinstall and, if so, what should they do differently? Any ideas are appreciated!!

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer utamyb

    So the answer, at least for me, ended up being a permissions issue. No reinstall required. I am no longer getting the error message no matter how old the Captivate project is that I open and convert to 9.

    Hope this helps anyone who might be getting that error that is working in a corporate environment where IT may have their files on lockdown.

    Special thanks to Lilybiri for the responses!

    2 replies

    U
    utamybAuthorCorrect answer
    Participant
    March 2, 2017

    So the answer, at least for me, ended up being a permissions issue. No reinstall required. I am no longer getting the error message no matter how old the Captivate project is that I open and convert to 9.

    Hope this helps anyone who might be getting that error that is working in a corporate environment where IT may have their files on lockdown.

    Special thanks to Lilybiri for the responses!

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    March 1, 2017

    The effects in the 'Other Effects' folder are not compatible with HTML5 output. You didn't specify if you talk about Responsive projects, which have only HTML5 output, or about normal projects, which can be published both to SWF and HTML5.

    I didn't have any issues with the Glow effect for SWF output up till now. Are you on the latest version 9.0.2.437? When installing the patches did you clear the Preferences and some folders as mentioned in the Release notes?

    U
    utamybAuthor
    Participant
    March 1, 2017

    Thanks for the response Lilybiri! I'm sorry for leaving my version and project information out. This is not a responsive project. I read about Other Effects not being valid for HTML5 output on the forums (probably from one of your responses!) but disregarded it since it doesn't apply to our projects (yet!).

    Yes, we are on the latest version 9.0.2.437. Our IT department pushed out the upgrade using a script so I'm not sure if they cleared the preferences and those other folders mentioned in the release notes. I personally used the Clean Preferences utility in the Adobe Captivate folder on my own PC but I had already launched Captivate before I did that, which the Release Notes clearly say not to do.

    I think I'll start by asking IT to reinstall the program on my machine and then I'll follow the steps in the Release Notes to see if that fixes the issue. If so, then we'll do the same with the rest of the team.

    Thanks for your input and your time!

    U
    utamybAuthor
    Participant
    March 2, 2017

    To give everyone that ends up finding this thread an update... our local drives are pretty much on lockdown at my company (for the most part) so we don't have write access to certain program folders. One of my IT guys logged into my machine with his mighty admin access and we were able to open an older Captivate file in 9 and add the effect with no issues.

    He concluded that there must be something going on in the background where Captivate is trying to write to a location, perhaps even temporarily, where my login credentials do not have authority. He is testing it out and I'll update the thread if we find that this is the solution.

    Let me just add that not being able to write to our Captivate program folders has really limited our ability to customize things like playbars and buttons (e.g. We are unable to create buttons in Illustrator and move the picture files to the Gallery > Buttons folder). Grrrr....

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