Importing MS Powerpoint slides to Captivate

[merigorownd]

Does anyone know why I am unable to import MS Powerpoint slides into Captivate? The option is ghosted out under File > Import > Powerpoint slides. I am building a responsive project  classroom and I was trying to import into a Content Slide that I formatted with a master template style. As a work around, since there were only two PowerPoint slides, I opened those in Adobe Photoshop and turned them into jpg. Then I placed those into my content slide side by side. Two bad I cannot seem to be able to place a Powerpoint presentation that would pop up in a separate window. PS. There are some things about Captivate that seem really basic to me but I want it to be a more robust program. Thanks!

[John T Smith]

First,

Duplicate message deleted... posting the same question more than once is confusing

This is an open forum, not a direct line to Adobe support... you need to wait for a reply

Second,

Read https://forums.adobe.com/docs/DOC-7273

Moved from Connections forum to specific Program forum

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

When PowerPoint is imported into Captivate the process converts each PowerPoint slide to a SWF animation and sets that animation as the background for the slide. Since Responsive HTML 5 is there in order to abandon SWF output, it's no surprise to me that one cannot import PPT into a Responsive project.

I think the best you can do here is to carefully save out the images and add them to the different slides in your Responsive project.

Cheers... Rick

[merigorownd]

Thanks Rick. But I cannot get Captivate to import the Powerpoint slides at all. Are you saying that maybe since mine is a Responsive HTML project that it's not an option to do this? Is my workaround my best bet here?

[Captiv8r]

That's exactly what I'm saying, If I create a Responsive project my PPT import is disabled as well.

Although I think opening the slides in Photoshop is overkill.

Cheers... Rick

[merigorownd]

Hi Rick,

The PowerPoint files won't open in Captivate at all. I have to first open them in Photoshop and then save them from there as jpgs, and then place them as images into the Captivate file. If you know of a more direct way to get the slides into my Responsive Captivate project let me know.

Thanks a bunch!

Mimi~

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

Please use PNG, not lossy compression with JPEG if you want some quality. I would NEVER start from a PPT for a responsive project (and rarely will for a blank project). A great presentation tool is not a good eLearning tool, certainly not if your goal is on mobile devices.

I wanted to add that if you ever wish to import PPT-slides in a normal (blank) project, you cannot use a custom master slide. PPT import will always need the Blank master slide which needs to be blank (exception for eventually coloured background). That Blank Master slide is also needed for any software simulation.

It is not only for the conversion to SWF that you cannot import PPT into a responsive project, but also because each PPT-slide has a fixed resolution, responsive projects need to have a dynamic resolution, both for slides and every object. That is one of the reasons that the Position Properties panel is so important for Responsive projects, and that the Rulers have a default setting of % instead of pixels.

[BDuckWorks]

For future reference, I posted a detailed description of how we export PowerPoint (or Word) images for use in Captivate in this thread:

Re: PowerPoint to Captivate

Specifically, see the section beginning with:

Furthermore, a PPTx file can be renamed as ZIP, then opened to harvest the images placed in the PowerPoint file. This sounds like what you are after. Note that this includes graphics such as headers, footers, logos etc. placed in the master slide.