Converting Captivate 8 project to Captivate 2017 stopped showing Preview inside Captivate

Report · Dec 18, 2017

Please help. I have a non-responsive Captivate 8 project converted to 2017 trial that showed the "Preview > Project" from the menu; now it does not. My company purchased the product and it re-installed as a paid version and now I get empty screen when trying to "Preview" the project. It was working before. I have only one slide (utilizing only one "blank" page in the master template) in my project that has a background image. This slide has many click boxes, objects used inside to created many light boxes and navigation assets for previous/next and end). Converting to paid project is when the PREVIEW stopped working. This project is 90% done with all items named. I can see the library items on the right and so when I click show LIBRARY folder; it brings me to the folder that shows many folders including the Adobe Captivate CACHE folder and PROJECT folder but there are no folders inside each of those to match what the library folders showing.

Question: How do I get to the library where these items are stored? I am thinking the new install overwrote the path to where I originally have these library items.

Question: If I try to create brand new 2017 project; will I have to manually rename every single object again? How can I avoid that?

Question: If the Captivate PreviewLoader works on Flash swf; is there anything I need to look for machine-wise?

Actions I have done:

Looked at timeline to ensure no Click boxes holding up the preview - I have been previewing every step of the way until I installed bought version of Captivate 2017.
I cleared preferences
I tried to reset the Master theme to 2017 but there is no way for me to know if it did it or not
I updated the Chrome Browser for flash (to see if I could even get it to preview in the Browser) (No it did not preview)
I am in the process of re-installing Captivate 2017. (It did not help... still cannot preview the project.)

Message was edited by: Susan Braswell

Report · Dec 18, 2017

I took the same file home where I am running Captivate 2017 trial version on my MAC. I had no problems running the Preview > Project from the menu. So what is different on the windows machine that causes the Preview to not load? What is needed to run the Preview Project choice?

Report · Dec 18, 2017

Preview > Project renders an SWF version of the CPTX and uses Flash Player locally on your computer to show the content of the project.

Perhaps your Windows computer does not have a functioning Flash Player, or something else is blocking Flash content from working. You mention that your Windows computer is a company PC. Is it possible your IT department is moving away from Flash content?

Report · Dec 18, 2017

Thank you for responding. Maybe something happened to the Flash when I re-installed. I will check when I get back on Wednesday. I am working from home tomorrow on the MAC.

Report · Dec 20, 2017

Hi @RodWard, The project I have is a "virtual tour" of our portal page. I use lightboxes, click boxes, buttons for navigation as the user moves around the screen. That is why I am only using one slide.

MAC: I was able to preview and work in the captivate 2017 file on my MAC all day yesterday. I saved many backup versions as I went. One hitch: I kept my MAC at the trial version because I am afraid that if I converted to the PAID version the previewer might be blank too. This will present as a problem when my trial version ends. If that happens I would be dead in the water since I already converted this project from Captivate 8 into Captivate 2017 and have done extensive tweaks since then.

PC: I copied my last file (from the MAC) and opened in Windows 10 Enterprise Version 1703 OS Build 15063.726. 64-Bit this morning. The Preview window inside Captivate is still blank ( I was able to get the HTML5 browser preview working.)

I have IE 11.726.150630 version 11.0.48.
in IE the :add-ons" are all 32 bit and 64 bit
Chrome: I have set the Shockwave "To Ask"
Adobe Shockwave Player - I just upgraded to version 12. (rebooted and still unable to preview)
I updated my background on the MasterSlide so it would appear throughout the theme (even though I am only using one slide.)
I once again cleared the preferences cache
I am in the process of creating a brand new project by copying and pasting each section. This is painstaking re-work just to get the Previewer to work again.

Other Questions: (Do you know...)

1) The library items are stored within each CPTX file correct?
2) Is there a physical preference area for Adobe Captivate that I can delete and let it regenerate like other Adobe products?

3) I noticed the install uses Encoder CC 2015 while I have Encoder CC 2017. Is this a problem?

Thanks for your help.

Sue

Report · Dec 20, 2017

Was the MAC version browser preview using Safari?

Your issue with the PC preview not working sounds like it would be something blocking the file from playing locally from your system. To test if this is the case, upload the same published output to a web server and test from there using the same browser (e.g. IE 11) that doesn't work when playing the content locally. If the browser doesn't have an issue with the content when coming from a web server, your issue will be permissions-based. (E.g, it could be Flash Global Security for SWF output or other permissions for HTML5 output. Browsers are becoming tighter in their security.)

Yes the Library items are stored within the CPTX.

You can clear Preferences by executing the files found in the Utils directory of the Captivate install directory. There are separate files there for MAC and PC systems.

The Adobe Media Encoder version should not matter, but Captivate may not trigger the AME to open if it's not the one that comes bundled with the software. All this means is that you may need to take the advance step of encoding any video files BEFORE bringing them into the Captivate project.

Report · Mar 13, 2018

I know it's a few months later but I have the same issue.

I can't view in preview. I can't preview in an HTML browser but ironically I can preview in HTML5 browser (including the flash components since the browser has flash.)

I tested on our server as well and still only the HTML5 publish worked. Everything was fine before I converted the course from 8 to 2017.

Does anyone have an answer for this?

Thanks!

Report · Apr 02, 2018

I had the same issue. I found the answer in the forums here. This