I cannot access network files from Captivate 6 Trial

[sacrtc]

I downloaded the trial version of Captivate 6 for evaluation. My company stores our data on a server. When I try to open a file Captivate does not have an option to go to the server, which in this case is set up as my Z drive. All my other Adobe programs work fine. We have a much, much older version of Captivate that is on another computer and it works fine. The trial version will open any files I have on my laptop but not from the network. I can't even see them in the Captivate open file menu. If I open the folder where the files are stored and right click and "open with" I can get the file to open, howevr I get an error saying that some of the features may not function well because I don't have administrator privilages and I should close and open the program with "run as administrator". Is there a setting that I missed? If it is a case where all the files must be stored locally for Captivate to see them, this will not be a viable option for our company.

I run an Alienware M15x Running Windows 7 64bit.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Lilybiri]

Because of several functionalities, Captivate doesn't like to work on files situated on a network drive. Please copy the file to your HDD and after closing the file you can backup it back to the network drive.

Secondly to have all  functionalities available (you should have seen a warning) on Win7 you need to run Captivate as an Administrator: use the right-click menu on the shortcut that opens Captivate, you can check the option to Run as Administrator, or change that option permanently using the Advanced button

Lilybiri

[sacrtc]

Thanks for the answer. I knew all of this though. My issue was with it seeing our shared drive. Even running as Admin it would not see the drive. I got it to see the shared drive but have to force it. Having to work on everything locally and then transfer is not the best solution for us. This seems like a very awkard program, especially coming from Adobe. Let us not even mention that fact that they do not have a simple replay functionality in the program.

Thanks again for answering.

[RodWard]

I am not sure what you mean by no replay function. Captivate does have this.

With regard to your other issues:

It may be that the way your IT environment is set up is causing Captivate difficulties in maintaining a link to your mapped drive. Nowadays there are some new approaches to virtualization and load balancing of servers that can introduce all manner of issues. Bottom line is that all Captivate project files should be on your local drive while you are working on them. End of story. If you are NOT willing to work this way, the by all means choose another app. But in my experience ALL of the desktop authoring tools need this.

[sacrtc]

As far as the replay function. Captivate does not have a simple button that allows for a slide to replayed from the beggining should a person need to. For example (just in case my explination is not very good), we have slides that include animations that were created in Flash. The slides also include audio. There is no simple way, at least not on that is listed anywhere that we can find, and we have searched for days, by where you can simply insert a button that will start the slide over and replay the animation as well. I mean a "simple" solution. It can be done with coding and manipulation of the flash files, and the creation of our own buttons. This method is just more work than I would expect for what should be a very standard feature. Any good, anc Captivate is by no means a horrible program, and I am still on the upside of the learning curve here, any good learning course allows for the student to replay a slide just in case they need to hear something twice or four times. If you know of a very simple way of doing this, there are tons of folks out there that would love to know. On Adobe's own forums the solution most suggested was to insert a blank slide before the slide animation and have your button go to the previous slide. We did find a way to accomplish this but it takes a bit of coding and the use of a widget to do. The issue is that it is not consistant. Sometimes it works other times it does not. This may be because of the network issues with Captivate. I am trying to get it downloaded to a desktop and see if that will solve the problem,  but the download has failed so I won't know for a while yet.

For the network thing, I don't doubt what you say at all, as far as the program needed the files locally. It just seems, especially in the year 2012 (almost 2013) that this is an issue. I have the entire Adobe CS6 suite as well as CS4 Creative Suite and have not had a single issue with any one of those programs funtion with the files stored on a different machine. Agreed, if we want to use Captivate we must use it the way you have suggested, it just seems like they would have designed it so folks could work over networks easier. It is not a matter of NOT being Willing to work this way, it is a matter of needing to be more efficiant and share data between several folks working on the same projects.

Thanks again for your help.

[RodWard]

Since Captivate 5x came out there have been fundamental changes to the way the app works.  On WinVista and Win7 systems you need to set the Captivate application to Run As Administrator otherwise it will NOT work properly and will most likely crash.  If you are installing Captivate 6 to a networked PC in a locked down IT environment where you cannot get permission to Run As Administrator for this app, then you will encounter issues. 

All Captivate versions have worked more reliably when project files are stored locally on your PC hard drive.  For several years now this has been the recommended practice if you wanted to avoid file corruption.

Your description of how Captivate is reacting suggests to me that perhaps your PC environment contains other issues than just not running as administrator.  Is it possible that your company is also using virtual My Documents folders or roaming user profiles?  If so, these also will cause Captivate 6 to malfunction.

[sacrtc]

Thanks for the information. This is not our issue however. We just have a simple server setup. If I open a file from the server and then close it Captivate will then see the shared drive. I have gotten it to function, but it is a pain. So far I do not see any loss of functionality, but it should be this difficult to work with. We are evaluating and at this point, I'm not real sure I like it.

Thanks again for the answers.