How do I avoid corrupt Captivate file?

[joeslevine717]

I'm pretty much at the end of my rope. About every 10th time (guessing) I save changes in the .cptx file, it hangs and then is hopelessly corrupted, and I have to request the most recent backup from my IT dept. It all feels so delicate that I'm fearful of saving changes.

I don't think I'm using any unusual features in the file. It's basically just a slide show with a lot of clickboxes. No animations, not that that should matter.

Any ideas for how I can avoid getting file corruption, short of updating to Captivate 9.x? Any features, actions, or conditions I should be careful about?

I'm running 8.0.3.290. I'm on Windows 7. Hard Drive has about 20GB of disk space left.

[RodWard]

Are your Default Locations set to Folders ONLY on your local C drive?

How long since you cleared out your Project Cache?

[joeslevine717]

Thanks for the reply. Good reminder about clearing the project cache. I last cleared it about a month ago (it's just not something one thinks about). How often should I do that? Weekly? Daily?

How do it set "default locations to folders". In "General Settings", the only "Default Locations" options I see are for "Publish At" and "Project Cache". And I've set that to:

C:\Users\myname\Documents\My Adobe Captivate Projects

[TLCMediaDesign]

I always sequence my saves, a,b,c etc. At least you don't lose too much time if the file becomes corrupt.

[RodWard]

Clear the Cache as often as you like.  If you've only got 20 gig left on your PC then I'd be clearing it every week at least.

Please don't tell me you have BOTH Publish At and Project Cache set to the SAME folder location.  You MUST keep these folders separate.  I would also recommend that you set up a couple of special folders at the very root level of your C drive. 

I have mine called  _Captivate_Project_Cache and _Captivate_Publish_Folder

[joeslevine717]

OK, good advice on clearing the cache. I'll make a habit of that. Sounds like disk space might be an issue.

As for my Publish At settings, I'm simply using default settings. Why would I assume I couldn't do that? I'm honestly a bit put off my the "Please don't tell me" response. You could simply say "If you have both Publish At and Project Cache set to the same folder location, I strongly recommend keeping these folders separate". That accomplishes the same goal without making me, the user, also feel like I would have known this if I weren't a complete idiot.

All that said, I'll certainly take your advice.

[R_H__]

Don't forget in Captivate settings you can turn on "Generate Project Backup". This automatically keeps a backup file which is 1 save behind your latest save.

Edit > Preferences > General Settings

I'm not sure if you have any widgets, but they used to make our older captivate files become corrupt quite often.

[Lilybiri]

The indication 'Publish at' is a bit confusing IMO because the path next to that indication is really the path where the cptx and cpvc projects will be stored by default. That confusion doesn't exist for the Cache folder, which needs to be a different folder of course. On this forum we sometimes see that users lost their project files when clearing the cache because both paths were the same. The advantage of using the default settings is that the folders are defined automatically as Flash trusted locations.

You can have problems if 'My Documents' is pointing to a networked folder, which is often the case in company networks.

[RodWard]

I said: "Please don't tell me"  because over the years I've been helping people on this forum I've seen far too many occasions where someone did exactly that (use the same folder as Project Cache AND the location of their CPTX project files) only to lose ALL of their work (including the automatically-generated backup files) when they hit the Clear Cache button.

Believe me, if you had done that, you WOULD have felt like a complete idiot afterward, and I was just trying to spare you that experience.