Export of Closed Captions crashes with a "fatal error"

I'm posting this after weeks of trying to sort it out & following others with the same problem & no solution.

Every time I tried to export "Project Captions and Closed Captions", Captivate crashed with a "fatal error" message, creating a .doc file that would only open as "Read only" that was a blank page (except for the Adobe Captivate heading and date). Closed Captions would not print to handouts either.

I found the bug. Quite simply, Captivate does not accept empty closed captions, with no text (e.g. required during a break in the voice audio, as closed captions apparently have a start time but no end time). On export, creation of the Word file sticks at this point. Even closing Word isn't enough. I had to go into Task Manager and close the background process of Word. On opening Word after that, it opens an "Autosave" of the captions file where the text displays up to that empty caption!

By typing a space into the empty captions, everything worked properly: I could export closed captions & handouts - AND Import > "Project captions and Closed Captions..." is suddenly active again! And works.

Engineers should enable Captivate to operate with empty closed captions, even if it's just by including an invisible character by default.

Now to try & pack a proper Trial into my last available 9 days!