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M
MrsBark
Participant
March 3, 2024
Question

New Captivate F4 Hotkey Conflict with Excel Simulation "Absolute Cell Reference"

  • March 3, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 169 views

Hello,

 

I teach Excel at an early college high school and want to make some short simulations for my students to follow. However, one of the things I need to teach is how to make an "Absolute Cell Reference," which is done by clicking the F4 function key. Unfortunately, the new Adobe Captivate doesn't allow me to change the F4 hotkey for Automatic Panning to something that doesn't conflict with the Excel absolute cell reference function key.

 

Is there a workaround for this? Or better, is there a plan for allowing us to customize the new Captivate hotkeys like we could in Classic? This is literally a dealbreaker for me to be able to make Excel tutorials with the new Adobe Captivate.

 

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

Sandra

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    March 3, 2024

    Personallty I would never use the New Captivate for software simulations, and not even for the reason you mention. I started to use Captivate for software sims over two decades ago, as professor in a university college where I did teach a lot of software applications. You don't specify which mode you are using in the sims. I only used them for assessment/training, because since version 6 I use Video Demo for passive video creation.

    The main reason for me to avoid the sims in New Captivate is the automatic panning and zooming on mobile devices. That is not what is wanted for an assessment, to tell the students where they have to go.

    Captivate Classic is a better choice, but it is buggy, more buggy than version 11.5.5.553 which is my preferred version at this moment for the use case you mention.

    Customisability has lost with the most recent version of Captivate, was never a priority.

    M
    MrsBarkAuthor
    Participant
    March 4, 2024

    Thank you for your reply, @Lilybiri. My hope is to make short, interactive simulations for specific actions in Excel that will be used in an RPG-style game that engages my students (9th-grade high school freshmen 13 - 15 years old). They struggle with some of the concepts, and I'm trying to make something fun that will catch their attention and help them learn how to navigate the application in a fun, replayable way. I wanted to use Captivate for its SCORM publishing capabilities, so I can upload it into my LMS and translate game points into extra credit grades. Teaching college-level courses to students this young takes a lot of thinking outside of the box. 🙂

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    March 5, 2024

    Thinking outside of the box is necessary for any good teaching on any level.

    I started in Captivate with creating self-assessments for a lot of applications (MS Project, Photoshop, InDesign to mention some). Excel can be tricky (preferred Lotus 1-2-3).  Can you give an example of 'concept'? You'll probably need to embed the software sims (Assessment or Training mode) in between other content slides, which can have quiz slides (default SCORM quiz types, drag&drop), maybe interactive video. Due to the age of your learners I would include a way to show them progress (gamification element), let them skip content if a pretest score is sufficient etc...

    Have a look at this assessment which I created for testing Captivate experts for a client:

    Challenge: checking Captivate skills - eLearning (adobe.com)

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