Import PPT deck designs into CP9 as themes

[seanb76399741]

Hello Adobe & Community,

I have a question that I could not find the answer to in previous threads so I apologize if I missed a similar thread.

My question is not about importing a PowerPoint presentation, but ONLY the deck design as a theme into CP9.

I understand that under the "hood" these are two different styles and programs and cannot be carbon copied...However the design aspect of PowerPoint is purely aesthetic and thus does not pose any functionality and thus SHOULD be transferable as a theme.

I put the emphasis on the word "should" because this is where I run into the speedbumps that prevent me from doing this.

The main reason I ask if this is possible is because my Marketing department uses different programs to create their content.

Every program they use is interchangeable with the deck designs of their PowerPoint to make every piece of material we produce, uniform in looks.

As the one in charge of all global training development, I would like to follow their lead for the deck designs.

(Manually creating it from scratch within CP9 is proving quite difficult)

Any and all help with this would be greatly appreciated.

And if the one and only answer is that it is NOT possible then so be it, but if I never ask I will never know if one of you guys/girls found a way for this to happen!

Sincerely,

Sean

[Lilybiri]

A Captivate 9 theme has much more than what a PPT theme has, and is indeed totally different. I very much doubt there could be any way to import. Read what I tried to explain about the content of a CP Theme:

What's in a Theme - a Template? - Captivate blog

It is more than just 'design'. Just an example: the essential Quiz and Score master slides have a lot of functionality built in, which is totally lacking in PPT.

I didn't mention responsive themes, which have no alternative at all in PPT.

[seanb76399741]

Hi Lilybiri,

I came to those conclusions also, I am just trying to find a way to just copy the design aspect, not functionality.

Thanks for thinking about this with me.

Anyone else have anything other than what we have established so far?

[BDuckWorks]

IMHO, it sounds like you're looking for a workflow to follow that will allow you to create a Captivate template or project file to serve as a starting point for your work.

Unfortunately, there is no magic in Captivate to replicate a PowerPoint them into Cp; and even worse, the functionality to generate Cp content from PPT files gives many new users the expectation that there is a simple way to accomplish.

My approach was to use the PPT to generate a series of images based on the master slide types produced by our marketing department. I then manually imported just the images to Cp, and re-created them as master slides with background images, font and paragraph styles, etc. Be sure to name the master slides so that selecting or inserting them by layout is easy to do.

Lilybiri​'s blog posting has details on how theme colors, shapes, and captions can be designed.

I also found it quite useful to edit the Quiz Master Slides, set quizzing and LMS preferences, copyright and project contact information in project preferences.

[Lilybiri]

You should set up a custom theme: that includes the Theme Colors palette, all object styles, all Master slides (including the Quizzing Master slides) and the skin. You can set up Preferences but that is not really a design aspect. Preferences can be included in a template or can be exported and imported in any project. As I explained in the mentioned blog post, I will not turn quickly to a template because it has too much restrictions, but prefer a Theme and Preferences. Be careful: you have to know before starting whether you want a responsive or a normal theme. Too many users still think that you have to create a Template for design reasons, which is no longer the case (it used to before version 6). For Shared actions I'm using a separate library, and when you drag them in the present project, the variables are automatically created.