Next and Previous Buttons stop working mid project

Report · Dec 16, 2019

I can't seem to figure out what is wrong with this project. For most of the slides, the next and previous buttons work fine, but then towards the end, they won't work on a specific slide. This slide uses forced navigation. There is another slide in the same project that uses forced navigation as well and that one works fine.

If I remove this slide from the project, then the following slide after this breaks down as well. and the buttons won't work on that slide either.

Report · Dec 16, 2019

Do you really have an instance of those buttons on EACH slide? Are you on a very old version of Captivate? Why do you not use shape buttons on master slides or timed for the rest of the project?

On this slide you have 4 interactive objects, two extra buttons which pause before the pausing point of the Next and Previous buttons. What are they doing?

Report · Dec 16, 2019

I'm using Captivate 2019 11.5.1.499

"Those buttons"? Not sure which buttons you are referring to. The previous and next buttons or the Mechanical and Chemical buttons?

Most of the slides have previous and next buttons. This is the only slide with the Mechanical and Chemical Buttons though.

Helping a colleague here, not sure why she did not use shape buttons, but not sure how that would change anything. I am not that advanced of a Captivate user.

The Mechanical and Chemical objects change the state of the ms_restraints text.

Report · Dec 16, 2019

Previous button IS a shape button. I see that it has _760, does that mean you have 760 Previous buttons in one project? That is crazy... Buttons have pausing points at different times... why? It is not a good practice to have a pausing point at the last frame as is the case for two buttons out of 4. Do you understand the timeline and the functionality of pausing the timeline? Have a look at:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/pausing-captivates-timeline

Report · Dec 16, 2019

Thanks, I will review the blog to help better understand the timeline.

Unfortunately the issue is not just with this slide. Even if I delete that slide out of the project entirely, the next slide, which is a multiple choice question slide becomes stuck as well.

All other slides up until this point work fine, but at this point, the process just breaks down. I can't move forward or back, and like I said, even if I delete this slide, the slide that takes its place sticks too.

Report · Dec 16, 2019

Like Lilybiri I have also seen similar issues caused by having hundreds of buttons in a project. You eventually seem to hit some kind of limit and things won't work. But if it IS due to the number of interactive objects exceeding that limit things don't work period.

If it is this kind of limit causing the issue, you can test by taking a copy of your project and rRemoving or hiding slides BEFORE the issue occurs to see if that resolves it.

How many slides are there in this project all up?

Can you also take a look at Project > Advanced Interactions dialog and filter the list by clicking the Buttons option at the top. How many buttons does it show that you have?

Another possibility is that your project has become corrupted. Sometimes this occurs because some object in the project loses a reference ID and everything stops working after that point. If this is the issue, you can try creating a new shell project of the same height and width dimensions and then copy groups of slides into that project, testing every so often to see if that copy/paste process is able to remove the corruption. Copying and pasting content from one project to another forces all objects to be assigned new Object IDs and that can sometimes fix the problem.