Editing PowerPoint slide creates a small window

Report · Aug 02, 2017

Hello, thank you in advance for your help.

I have been having an issue with editing Captivate 2017 presentations that were imported from PowerPoint. I import the PowerPoints using "high fidelity," and do not link them to the Captivate project. I edit the slides by right clicking the slide --> Edit With Microsoft PowerPoint --> Edit Slide/Edit presentation. This is where I encounter a problem. The PowerPoint window opens like it is supposed to, except the window is really small and does not fill the whole screen. The following is a picture of what this looks like: .

It looks like you should be able to drag the light gray window to make it bigger, but nothing happens when I try. I tried minimizing and maximizing the window, but all that happened is the outline of the gray window glitched even more:

I have no idea why this is happening and nothing I try fixes the problem. This is not a horrible problem when it looks like the above pictures, although it is harder to see and edit the slides because they are smaller than they should be. However, sometimes this small window cuts off part of the PowerPoint slide so that I can't edit half of it, which is a much bigger problem.

Any help you all could give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Report · Aug 11, 2017

This is an example of how the PowerPoint edit window cuts off part of the PowerPoint slide so that I can't edit part of it. Not only can I not access the bottom part of the slide, but I also cannot access part of the menu at the top, so I can't access the timing of the slides.

I also neglected to mention this before, but I cannot scroll at all, so there is no way for me to see the other parts of the PowerPoint.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all!

Report · Aug 11, 2017

Hi there

Yes, we know that Captivate has this capability to open PowerPoint under Captivate's odd window. But I think you may be better off just opening the PowerPoint separately. Making your changes, then from the Captivate library choosing to update the PowerPoint. (The little ball should be red and I believe you either click it or maybe Right-Click it and an option to update should appear.)

Cheers... Rick

Report · Aug 14, 2017

Thank you for the suggestion Rick! I will try that, although I think it will be difficult because I am trying to time some text-to-speech with the PowerPoint animation, so opening PowerPoint and updating Captivate over and over my be overly time-consuming. I wish there was a solution to fix the problem that Captivate is cutting off the PowerPoint slide in edit mode.

Also, I did not link my Captivate file to PowerPoint. I did however import the PowerPoint using high fidelity so that all of the animations would transfer over properly. Since I didn't link the PowerPoint, can I still use your solution? It seems as though I would no longer be able to update the Captivate file by opening the original PowerPoint file.

Thank you!

Report · Aug 14, 2017

I could be mistaken about this but I don't believe I am. If so, I'm sure someone will pop in pretty quick to give me a proper scolding.

It's been my own experience that importing a PPT always links it in some way. The main difference being that one way is actually linked and leaves the PPT where it is while the other way actually copies the PPT to the Captivate library. That second way allows you to take the cptx file to any machine you like and bring the PPT with you.

Cheers... Rick