Converting Oracle UPK files to Adobe Captivate

[Guest]

Hello, my company needs to convert Oracle UPK files into Adobe Captivate files. We are changing systems and we don't want to remake all of our training simulations again. Does anyone know of a software program that can convert upk files into adobe captivate files?(basically, dhtml(for upk) into swf(for captivate).

Also, I've read the captivate uses cptx and upk uses odarc, these would be the collection of individual files that make up swf and dhtml, respectively...I assume. Any converter for any of these files would be nice?

[RodWard]

I've never heard of a converter to do this.  I hate to break the bad news, but if Captivate is your desired tool, then you'll just need to recreate your courses in Cp.

[Franklin 2]

Totally incorrect. You can export your training simulations, that is existing Tutorials, from UPK and into PowerPoint presentations. Within UPK Developer 12.1.0, change Preview (at the top left of the screen) to Presentation, highlight one of your tutorial files, and press the Green Arrow icon.

UPK will create a .pptx powerpoint of your tutorial, usually in:

C:\users\your_user_name\AppData\Local\UPDev9\Preview\Publishing Content\Presentation.

Note: In the above example, your_user_name is your windows username literally.

If you don't see the above folders, you likely have Show Hidden Folders / Files turned off in Windows.

Go into the above folder and find your PowerPoint. Copy it to somewhere else that you will know to look in the future (i.e., a folder under Documents or on your Desktop).

Once the tutorial is exported to a PowerPoint, you can easily import it into Adobe Captivate, Articulate, or whatever other eLearning solution you are using. Cheers. This may be 8 years late, but better than never.

[RodWard]

Yes you are several years late to the question but that does not mean you aren't welcome to the Captivate User Forum.

However, I think the original poster was looking for a way to convert UPK published DHMTL content directly into Captivate project files (CPTX) or SWF output.  There was no mention of wanting it in PPT, so I did not offer that as an option. But UPK users might find it beneficial.

Unfortunately, if you start a Captivate project by importing a PPT deck you lose the ability to manipulate objects directly in Captivate.  You have to laboriously round-trip edit back through the PPT each time to make a change.  It's NOT user-friendly.  (Articulate Storyline and several other apps DO convert the PPT into native objects for their app, but Adobe never implemented that workflow for Captivate.  So most Captivate developers would not recommend using PPT as a starting point.)

[Franklin 2]

If we are talking about being able to export proprietary UPK simulations (tutorials) and import them into another tool, I think most developers would prefer something to nothing. UPK doesn't play nice when it comes to exports. This hack gets you around that.

I used to author extensively in Captivate. I would often import screen captures of a uniform size and resolution, rather than capture them using the tool in Captivate.

Yes, I built eLearnings from images I captured elsewhere using other software.

You can take the screen captures from within the PowerPoint deck, and import them as backgrounds into Captivate. You can take the text from within the PowerPoint deck too, and use it to as you've indicated, to recreate your text boxes, callouts, intereactions etc. manually.

Something is better than nothing. A manual process beats recreating a simulation entirely from scratch,  when you could use the PowerPoint screen captures from UPK instead, and you could avoid having to retype all your text. Ideal? No. Better though than just saying "recreate the course in Captivate". That implies starting at net zero, which is unnecessary.