Importing Quiz Questions from Word or Excel?

[TessaM1]

I've done some searching to see if this has been answered before, but I haven't had any luck.

We have Captivate 5 and I am wondering if there is a way to import questions from Word (or Excel) into Captivate to avoid the time consumption of copying and pasting. I often get the quiz questions from a SME and then need to spend time copying and pasting; so I'm hoping there's a trick that I just haven't been able to figure out.

If there isn't a way to do this, I know that in Captivate 3, there was the Edit Question option that would let you edit the question and answers in a different screen from the Quiz Slide.  This was nice because if the questions and/or answers were longer, it would autmatically reformat the slide to make it fit. From what I can tell in Captivate 5, the only option is to edit directly on the slide which is frustrating because of the need to manually reformat. Does anyone know a way around this?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

~Tessa

[RodWard]

There's no feature in Cp5 to import questions from MS Word or similar.  You can copy question slides from other projects, but you still have to create and format them in Captivate.

Sorry.

Get your Subject Matter Expert a license for Captivate so that he or she can create the questions for you and avoid the double handling.

[mike_a_weiner]

RodWard, I want to make sure I understand you...(Captivate 5/Windows 7)

I have a subtitling company make captions as my company does video production. We are trying to use Captivate as a html presentation tool for the web.

So my subtitling company cannot provide me a file to direct import to Captivate?? I have to create all the captions myself?

I saw a .xml import option, but that wasn't seeming to work.

Please advise.

Thanks,
Mike

[RodWard]

The XML import option is designed for use when localising or translating the text in Captivate projects.

You create the project complete with all captions, menus, etc, then export to XML.  Translate the XML.  Then save your original (unedited) project for the second language and import the translated XML to update all the text in captions, menus etc to the new language.

As I understand the use case, it's not what you were looking for if you were seeking a way to avoid having to create the captions.  There has to be existing content to export to XML before you can later re-import it back in.  If it works similarly to the Export Project Captions and Closed Captions feature, then the file tags all the individual objects by their unique IDs so that it has a reference and knows where to put stuff on re-import.

[Guest]

Here's a suggestion. See if it works out.

Create a project by inserting Question Slides with default captions. Export the Captions in the project to a word file by using 'Export Project Captions and Closed Captions' from File menu. Send this Word document to your SME. He will have to replace the existing default captions with his questions and send the document back to you. All you will need to do is to import it back into your project.

Of course there are drawbacks to this - you will have to know the type and number of questions before-hand, but this is the only way you can get rid of the many copy-pastes.

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

Just to add to the last excellent suggestion: create a template with placeholders for all the type of question slides your want. Use this template to create the real project(s). Copy a standard text to all the placeholders and export the Captions. They will be identifiable by the slide number. The second column of the doc can be filled in with the Questions and you reimport in the CP-file.

Lilybiri

[mike_a_weiner]

The real use of the captions though is to create a transcript or caption the video that is being played so that someone who is hard of hearing/deaf can see the captions.

Is there anyway to do this in Captivate using both of your excellent suggestions, or via another way?

If a question slide is the generic term for a slide, then we are using caption slides, but if a question slide is something else, then we are not using questions (I realize that I posted this in a forum asking about quiz questions, but I saw a post that had me concerned about importing/exporting captions).

Thanks,

Mike

[Lilybiri]

Do you want to show the Text Captions on the slide or do you really want Closed Captions?

Lilybiri

[mike_a_weiner]

closed captions to appear on the slide under the video. but, i didn't see much pertaining to this in the manual i'm reading through.

thanks,

mike

[Lilybiri]

You can only add CC to slides where there is audio. You can export/import them, like other captons.

But  the workaround I proposed with template: I should try it out, do suspect that there is no possibility for placelholders in CC. You could put a dummy text in it and copy, but will be more tedious than with normal Text Captions. Or else, create a master slide that has space for your text captions at the bottom (you are on CP5?), then you'll be able to copy/paste a dummy text quickly. Then export to Word, have the second column filled in and re-import.

If you want to know how to create a smartmaster with a 'hole', I do call it a knockout master slide, I did blog about it:

Create/use a knockout master slide

Lilybiri

[SavvyEd]

Hi Lilybiri,

I actually need to do this. I need a way for SMEs to author quiz content outside of Captivate. Do you have an example of the doc that would be created using this process? Also, would there be a way to create randomized question pools this way?