Skip to main content
B
Basla284119223x9v
Inspiring
February 14, 2023
Question

Way to Figure Out which File is Most Recent? (Sloppy file keeping--ugh!)

  • February 14, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 521 views

I am new to Captivate and new to a job, and one of my first assignments is to go through old Captivate folders in our FTP (Filezilla) and figure out which files were used for the courses currently published to our LMS. There's little rhyme or reason to the naming of the folders or files. For example, we have a folder that has loose files plus folders named v1 through v5 and a folder named "vSteve." The "Date Modified" for the files are all showing up the same (I believe this is the date in 2017 they were transferred to the FTP). Is there a way to tell which files were modified most recently so I can figure out which ones are likely the ones on our LMS? I was hoping that info may be in the Project Information when I open up the file in Captivate, but no luck. Thanks in advance!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    RodWard
    Community Expert
    RodWardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 15, 2023

    If the output files are HTML5, you should be able to look inside the SCORM ZIP archive and find a TXT file called project.txt.  Inside that file near the second line of text there is a string that says something like this: "generator":"Captivate","generatorVersion":"11.5.5",

     

    That tells you that this output was published with Captivate 2019, sub version 11.5.5.  

     

    However, this doesn't tell you which specific CPTX file was used to publish this content.  If your project files are CPTX format then you need to know that this is in fact just a renamed ZIP file.  You can take any CPTX file and change the file ending to ZIP, then look inside that ZIP archive to find a file called info.cpi which you can open with Notepad or some other plain text editor.  In the very first line of that file you will see a number something like this: 11.5..499 which indicates this project file was last edited with Captivate 2019 sub version 11.5 build 499.

     

    From your description of the folders named v1 through v5, I would suspect that it is possible these folders show the different Captivate versions that were used over the time your company was using Captivate to build courses.  If that IS the case, then the v1 folders down to v4 folders would contain project files that have a .cp file ending.  It was with Captivate version 5 that Adobe started using the CPTX file ending which they still use today.  I also think your idea that perhaps the Date Modified dates are all the same due to copying them all over on the same day to a new server location.

     

    However, I may have some bad news for you.  If it turns out that the latest Captivate project file versions you have is from Captivate 5 vintage, then you are likely to find that the current Captivate version 2019 will not be able to open those files because too much has changed in the internal file structure of the project files.

     

    Anyway, first step is to look inside those v1 to v5 folders and see if my assumptions are correct.

    B
    Basla284119223x9vAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 15, 2023

    Thanks so much! The files do have a CPTX file ending, and fortunately they seem to open ok for me. When I converted one to a zip file, the info.cpi file in the folder says "9.0..223".  

     
    I also went into the LMS and downloaded a couple of the files there (I hadn't thought to do that before). They downloaded as zipped files with the project.txt files you mentioned. One project file says, "generatorVersion":"11.5.4" and the other says "generatorVersion":"9.0.2." 
     
    You can't recreate the CPTX file from the zip folder, right? I'm thinking I may be stuck going through and looking at the latest "v" file plus the loose files and the "Steve" files to see which ones match what's on our LMS.
     
    Thanks for your help!
    RodWard
    Community Expert
    RodWardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 16, 2023

    You are correct that you cannot recreate the CPTX files from the HTML5 output.

     

    But at least you HAVE some original project files to sort through.  Most of the time when people ask these types of questions their company has completely lost the original project files and they have no options left.

     

    Perhaps you will be able to rectify the file keeping when you find the correct files to preserve.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices