Skip to main content
tranzhuman
tranzhuman
Participant
May 31, 2017
Question

Importing Powerpoint 2016 with audio into Captivate 2017

  • May 31, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 4237 views

Hi everyone,

I'm having trouble getting slide narration/audio from Powerpoint 2016 to import into Captivate 2017. I've done some reading in the forums and the consensus seems to be to import audio separately into a Captivate presentation, but I'm posting just as a re-check for a couple reasons.

Adobe's documentation states that Captivate should import slide narration from Powerpoint: Import and edit PowerPoint presentations in Captivate

Here's the paragraph in particular:

Narration in a PowerPoint presentation slide is imported as a sound object and appears as a separate object on the Timeline. Even in the linked mode, changes made to the audio file in Adobe Captivate after import are not reflected in the respective Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. Similarly, changes made to the audio file in Microsoft PowerPoint are not reflected in the Adobe Captivate project. Object sounds are retained in the SWF file that is created from slides containing such objects.

My experience however is that this is not working in either Windows or OSX with Powerpoint 2016 and Captivate 2017. I also did a brief test with Captivate 9 on Windows. No audio is imported or available in the Captivate project from the Powerpoint file. Why don't I just move on and import the audio separately? I work with a lot of instructors who have already recorded their audio into Powerpoint. If Captivate was working as documented it would be a lot easier. Teaching an instructor how to extract the audio from their Powerpoint to then re-import it to Captivate may be a bridge too far for them.

I'm hoping I'm just missing something simple that is causing my audio to not import. Any tips or hints are appreciated. Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

4 replies

A
aidanw50837144
Participant
May 22, 2018

I have the same problem It would be nice if the feature worked as documented - it's my job to collate material from many sources, they have powerpoint and not capivate so it's easiest for them to record directly in PowerPoint. Now I have to find a workaround to strip the audio out of thousands of slides and resort them by hand in Captivate?

Can somebody tell me how to get the import pptx (2016) working correctly with audio in captivate 2017? Or delete the claim to this functionality from the documentation and spare me the frustration.

    ChidsPujar
    ChidsPujar
    Participating Frequently
    July 16, 2018

    I am currently facing the same issue. The funny fact is, for the first PPT that i imported into Captivate 9, the audio came in with the import, but now with the second PPT, the audio is missing in the captivate file. Now, i am worried that if i do a manual import of the audio in the Captivate file, all my Synching animation would be lost...Does Adobe any solutions? I am surprised that there has been no updates inputs in this thread from Adobe.

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    July 16, 2018

    This is NOT  Adobe support, this is a user forum. A couple of people try to answer most questions, but me at least never use PPT import at all. Reason why I cannot help you, my bad.

    Tammy_Moore
    Tammy_Moore
    Inspiring
    April 22, 2018

    I know this thread is coming up on being a year old, but I had the same question. However, for me, the oft recommended solution to rename the file to a zip instead of pptx wouldn't give me a successful upacking of the Powerpoint file so that I could get to any audio files. I really needed to get to those if I was going to tackle my current task. A little more research and I stumbled on this little app for Mac - File Juicer - Extract images from PDF, PowerPoint, Word, Excel and other Files on Mac OS X

    It worked great. It unpacked the file and gave me folders organized by resource type. Interestingly, I was able to get the audio in the original wav file  format I imported into the pptx (it was a test case, so I might get a surprise if audio is recorded inside Powerpoint instead of being imported in).

    I hope this will help others who are on a Mac and the only resource they have is a pptx file.

    C
    charbozzi
    Participant
    June 12, 2017

    I'm having this same problem with a PPTX file. However, I have an older PPT file that works just fine. I noticed that when you try to export the audio from a slide from the newer PPTX file, it exports as a .m4a media file, but the audio from the older file exports as a .wav file. I'm wondering if Captivate 2017 does not support .m4a and that is what's causing the issue. Any suggestions?

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    June 12, 2017

    No, Captivate does support wav and mp3 where wav is to be preferred because on publishing it will be compressed to mp3 by Captivate. As you did perhaps read, I never advice to import a ppt with audio at all. Please, import the audio clips separately in the Captivate library and add them in Captivate.

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    June 12, 2017

    Hi Charbozzi -

    A summary of my understanding of the situation at this point: Adobe's documentation specifically states that importing a Powerpoint with audio is supposed to work with Captivate. Most instructors start by recording audio on their slides and have many lectures in this format so I was hoping I was missing something. Lilybiri's response is to import audio directly into Captivate.

    This makes Captivate a less attractive tool for a lot of instructors I work with because I'm in your situation: A lot of instructors have courses worth of lectures with audio in Powerpoint. I understand that if I can get them to use Captivate from the start that's ideal but that's just not the reality. If that feature doesn't work as advertised Adobe should remove the feature and documentation stating that it works. Alternately state that it only works with PPTX files created with older versions of Powerpoint. I haven't tested to figure out which versions it works with exactly.

    So we're left with extracting audio from Powerpoint to get it into Captivate. One method to extract the audio already recorded in a PPTX file rename the file to a .ZIP file. Extract the .ZIP file. Open the extracted .zip folder and look in the ppt/media folder for the audio files. You're right - more recently recorded audio will be in .m4a format. You'd have to then convert these to .wav to import into Captivate. In fact I'm guessing this is the issue with more recent PPTX files not importing with the audio to Captivate.


    Sorry, I didn't say that it doesn't work, but I have seen so many complaints that I proposed to import the audio files separately. That means that they'll show up in the Library, are much easier to manage, to synchronize and to edit.  I wrot already a lot of times that Captivate is not a PPT converter at all, but a full-blown authoring tool. If you only want to convert a ppt, you better use a plugin for PPT. That is my personal opinion, use the best tool for each purpose. I never use PPT for eLearning, don't even use it for presentations because I estimate that Captivate offers me more functionality. That doesn't mean at all that PPT is not a good presentation tool, but it is not an eLearning authoring tool.

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    May 31, 2017

    I would never import audio that way. Please, import the audio clips directly in the Captivate Library and drag them from that Library to each slide.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices