Publishing with a trial version

[JudyWiessner]

I was using the trial version of Captivate 6 for a while, and I'm now seeing published files that won't display - just a black bar in the middle of the screen with a Captivate logo.

Is this because I was publishing from the trial version?  I've republished some of the files in the licensed version of V6 that I now have, and they seem to be fine.

Does anybody know what's going on?

[RobinDR]

I just checked my Adobe open cases and Adobe has closed my case as "withdrawn." I'm not sure why as I didn't withdraw the issue. I emailed my tech support rep to re-open. I'll update if I hear back.

[JudyWiessner]

Robin, This just gets worse and worse.  Our client gets the expired notice.  We republished everything in a licensed version and uploaded it, and like yours, it still gets the expired notice.  I've tested one in another LMS - expired.

I'm about to try cleaning out the registry to see if it's local to the computer.

Our client was planning to launch this on Monday.  They are not happy.

[Tammy_Moore]

Marion - Can you ask someone using another computer to give it a try? If you don't know anyone with Captivate 6 on their computer I am willing to jump in to help you out in this emergency. Of the ones I have replublished, it looks like the ones that are stubbornly hanging on to the expirey notice are ones that had a trial version timed template/theme build. I am not 100% positive because I haven't had enough time to get very far in to the republishing. I have had some successful republishes though. It is worth a shot trying it on another system.

[JudyWiessner]

Thanks, Tammy.  I'm in the process of uninstalling CP 6 completely with Revo Uninstall, then re-installing with the licensed version.  All our developers started with the trial version, so we don't have any clean machines.  I'll see how my reinstall goes - I may come back to you later today.  Thanks so much for the offer.

[Lilybiri]

Hi Marion,

Up till now all  filles I republished with the licensed version are doing well. I'm also available to help if necessary. This is so frustrating, I have been helping on this forum since 3 yrs and never experienced this kind of treatment; feeling personally ashamed.

Lilybiri

[RobinDR]

Hi Marion,

I can help too if you want to test. (I'm out of the office for the next couple of hours though.) The files that I republished on Tuesday are working.

This is terribly embarrassing and frustrating all the way around. Marion, are you using the subscription? It might bs worth a try to uninstall and reinstall 6.0.

Robin

[JudyWiessner]

Tammy, Lilybiri, and Robin, thank you all for your offers to help test.

I think I have the answer - I completely uninstalled Captivate 6 (I love Revo Uninstall), and reinstalled it using the serial number.  I updated the client's template and theme, then republished a course, and it worked in our LMS (which had bombed out before).  I'm off now to send a test to the client.  Fortunately, they are being very understanding.

[Tammy_Moore]

I may do the same this weekend if e-mail will slow down a little bit. I am answering the e-mail as fast as it is coming in. I am not gaining ground yet, but at least I am not losing ground. Oh the joy fof running an all 100% volunteer (me too) non-profit where so few hands do so much work. There are 14 of us serving about 500 live classroom students and about another 300 at-your-own pace students so far this year. Since I am admin, secretary, volunteer trainer, and teach most of the classes, I am up to my eyeballs in dawn to midnight work load right now. The Captivate issue could have been worse though. Had this hit after the live classes were all up and running it would have been a much bigger disaster. As it is, I think I can get everything fixed up before my classes officially start if I can ever get my head above water for a gasp of air. lol

[JudyWiessner]

Airzabal.  Yes.  That's what's happening.  The published files expire - after you've provided them to the client. 

[Tammy_Moore]

We started out testing Captivate in our project this summer with our small staff and we are hitting the same wall. We bought license all the way around for everyone, but with assuming the trial was a full working version and no warning that we would need to republish we are scrambling to back track to figure out what ones need to be republished. One is further ahead in the process than the rest of us and even projects that she has made since getting the full version are showing up as expired. Arggg.

I have had 2 weeks of dawn to midnight, 7 day work week hours to work in enrollments for the upcoming school year, so I haven't even had time to start looking at mine until this evening. I had a massive build intensive during the time of the trial because that was when I would hev the best chunk of time to work on my new materials for this year's classes. I have done a hard drive search and found I have 136 Captivate files. Now I am going to try to figure out what dates I was using the trial version so I can narrrow that number down. I am tired and frustrated that instead of getting a much needed rest this weekend I will be republishing and re-uploading files to the LMS.

I don't have a problem with crippling the output, but with that there needs to be a warning so you will know to track your projects to make it easy to find the ones that need to be republished and you will know not to distribute them. I shared my projects that I built widely including at the Adobe Educator's Forum so I don't even know who downloaded those that may be counting on them working in their classes.

About a week ago, just before all this came to light, I had downloaded the eLEarning Suite with the intention to trail the features in it to see if I may want the full suite license. I hadn't had time yet to install it, but I was hoping to have time after the enrollments butbefore classes started up. I think I will wait because I don't want to risk the trail version from that messing up the output from my fully licensed Captivate 6 copy that isn't a part of the suite. If I activate the suite, wouldn't I end up not having trully working output again because of the expiration setup? I cannot risk making SCORMs for my students that will expire with half of the class having test results and the other half still needing to take it. If I have to republish and reupload, I will lose student data from students that have already taken it. To my mind, crippled output causes more frustration than what Adobe Captivate meant to have in this expiration date design for their trail.

Looks like I will try out the eLearning Suite when school is out next summer instead of the fun I was anticipating in trying it out in the week or two before classes begin.

[Tammy_Moore]

I am finding that some of my projects that were not created or modified in the trial period but were made after are showing up as expired too. Some of them are based on templates/themes I built during the trial, but the settings are showing that they don't have an expiration date in the project settings. Has anyone figured out what the problem is? I am going through all 136 of my projects to check on them. Someone said they were going to turn their clocks forward in time to test to see if the republish solved the problem. Any news on if that test confirmed that the republish worked? I am hoping to get a confirmation that therepublished ones can be trusted.

[RobinDR]

Tammy, some of my courses were created after I had a licensed version and those expired too. It's almost as if Captivate didn't recognize that I'd converted from the trial version to a licensed version. The republish worked fine - those courses now display properly. However, my concern is "for how long?".  When I changed my system date and retested, that newly published course still worked.

I sent a sample of my course to an Adobe team member. As soon as I hear back, I will post the reply.

[Sankaram]

Hi,

    In Captivate 6 Trail version, published projects will expire in 30 days from the date of Captivate project creation. If you re-publish the same project in licensed version, the expiry will be removed.

If you need anymore clarification you can send me a mail at sankaram@adobe.com

Thanks,

Sankaram.

[Lilybiri]

Hi,

This is really an embarassing situation, because it occurred without any warning. Just an example: the 5th of July I did a webinar for Adobe about advanced conditional actions and offered published SWF's, created with the trial version, got a license number only after that webinar. All participants, if they will now look again at the published files, will see the Expired message....

Lieve

[JudyWiessner]

Lilybiri,  yes, it's embarassing.  For those of us who provided content to clients without knowing it would expire, it could cost us our reputation and possible future work.  Not to mention the time involved in republishing and redelivering the courseware.  In our case, we were only using the trial version because Adobe messed up the purchase of our multiple copies.

No warning.  That's the important thing.

[Tammy_Moore]

I realize that the tact being taken here by Adobe Captivate is merely a publishing of the statement that the "published items coming out of the trial version expires in 30 days" as if it is common knowledge and everyone shoudl have already known this.

I am sorry, but I really believe that this issue needs to be responded to in a different way. The expiration is not a common knowledge issue even by peopple who have used Captivate for many releases. People using the trial had no idea this was in place and people should not feel 'shamed' if they used the trial to create real world use projects whil ethey trialed the software. If you are going to test out software you want to test it out in the real use case not just some fun little sandbox outside of a real workflow. We are too busy to have time to play in the sandbox here. Change this crazy idea to cripple the output and not tell your customers. If you are going to cripple it is your responsibility to inform those that are trying the product.

I realize that text cannot convey emotions and I am not hopping up and down mad - I am too exhausted for that, lol. I am camly stating the obvious that I think everyone here that is being impacted by this sees clearly and Adobe seems to be brushing off. Yes, we realize we are stuck with the hunting down of files, republishing, and re-uploading, and contacting of students or clients and eating the crow of shame that we are in this position, but come on Captivate and 'man up' to do your part and acknowledge this was mishandled. The 30-day cripppling of output should have been stated in the trial version and made clear to users. I think it would help those of us out here that are having to do unexpected emergency clean up and having to face the 'manning up' to the embarrassment with our staff, students, and clients.

A truly commited fan of Captivate that is hoping to see response in kind of loyalty from Adobe staff

[S_Ayyappan]

Hi Tammy,

I’ve followed your participation in the past on our various forums, and value your feedback, and your continued support. I agree, we could have communicated this change in policy better. And I’m sorry this has resulted in so much confusion and rework.

This is being rectified, and our trials download page will now clearly call out that content will expire in 30 days.

If anyone on this thread would like our assistance in extending the validity of your published content for a few more weeks post the trial expiry, please write to Sankaram ( or wish-captivate@macromedia.com<mailto:wish-captivate@macromedia.com>)

That said, this is an important change for us to curb misuse of trial policies and product piracy. Also, as per our EULA, content created using trial products should not be used for commercial purposes.

Regards,

Shameer

Shameer Ayyappan

Sr. Product Manager - Captivate | eLearning Suite | Presenter

http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate

http://facebook.com/adobecaptivate

Adobe Captivate Forum<http://captivate.adobe.com/

[Tammy_Moore]

Thanks Shameer. I think making poeple more aware of it will be a big help. U have used The eLearning Suites for a few releases, so I thought I knew how it behaved in a trial. I guess this must be a new policy regarding the expiration. It is a shame that there isn't a more automatic way for the expiration to be deactivated merely by the purchase of the product instead of a republish being needed, but as long as people know about it, we can keep a running record of what will need it.

I really would like to try out the trial of the e-Learning Suite as I had planned if I can. I am not sure how the expiration system works under these circulmstance. I have a licensed copy of Captivate 6. If I install the eLearning Suite does the system know that I have a license for Captivate 6 or does it actually see the two Captivate's as entirely different? If so, How will I know which one I am working with so I am not surprised by having used the wrong one when I need to use something for my classes. Most likley if I build it, I will definitely want to use it. I assume I can take the published output from the Captive that is part of the eLEarning Suite and publish it in the Captivate 6 that I have the license to, or no? I do have licenced versions of the Dreamweaver, Audition, Flash and Photoshop through Creative Cloud. How does the suite impact those? Do those go back a trial condition or does the eLearning Suite see those as different as well?

The Creative Cloud is part of why I want to try out the eLearning Suite. Normally, I have bought the eLearning Suite (this will be my third one), but the Cloud has the Illustrator (my favorite way to make graphics for my Captivate projects), as well as Edge and  Muse which I wanted to try out now while Creative Cloud has the lower intriductory price. I felt those were important to explore along with Captivate as part of our future mobile stragtegy. As I understand it, the only way to get Edge and Muse are through the Creative Cloud. So this time around I have been in a quandry as to which way to go. My primary workhorses have always been Captivate and Illustrator. Illustrator isn't part of the eLearning suite and Captivate isn't a part of any thing Illustrator is in. Anyway, I am just trying to figure out what way to go with all the options that are ouit there and I figure the trial of the eLearning Suite might lend some clarity for my decisions. There are a few new elements in this version that I have watched the tutorials on but I am not yet sure I understand what they do, like the multi-sco packager. I was also curious abou the potential of Presenter. I have always dismissed Presenter as just an extension to PowerPoint which isn't useful to me since I am on a MAc, but this release looked like it had some features that didn't lock it to PowerPoint so I am interested in giving it a look see. I can wait on decision until a longer break when I have more time to just play instead of build for use. Early next summer, or perhaps the Thanksgiving/Christmas break if the eLearning Suite will negatively impact my licenced Captivate 6 or my licensed Creative Cloud software.

I must admit to assuming that the EULA was just the typical no reverse engineering and no one can sue type of thing. Those things make my eyes go cross-eyed even when I read them from top to bottom - mom here. I am not making my Captivate projects for commericail use. Our project is a bunch of home school moms from around the US that are collaboratively making courses for a home school online course co-operative made entirely of us moms that home school. As near as I can tell, our project was the first one to ever try such a thing. A few more have popped up of similar toool use, but all the others charge tuition. We are the only truly non-profit, non-tuition, trully volunteer project doing this. None of us get paid, the classes are free to home school children, and we don't sell the courses. Voluntary donations from the families pay for our online classroom and LMS. In the past two releases I have bought the e-Learning Suite myself. This summer I felt our project had enough momentum and with the Adobe subscription model making it possible to try to get at least get Captivate fora few of the other moms that wanted to see if they liked it and would use it. I am not sure if 'commercial use' use applies here or not, but I will have to assume we collaborative home school moms may get lumped in even if we are not making these projects for money at any step of the way.

By the way, I have had two full-night, 8 hour 'sleeps'. Yay! The continuous 18-hour work days without a day off since July 15th is now coming to a close. It is a tough time of the year each year since I am the only admin/secretary and our porject has grown so much. We will be serving over 500 live classroom students and several hundred at-your-own pace students this year all on about 14 volunteers (many of us teach multiple classes). It is a labor of love for all of us as we try to serve the home school community of which we are a part.

[JudyWiessner]

Hi Shameer,

Thanks for the offer to extend the validity, but it doesn't help us.  We have still had to have several people working over this weekend to uninstall and reinstall Captivate and then republish all the courseware they need to have up and running on Monday.  The problem is not just the trial version expiring, but the fact that, unless we completely uninstall the existing version and then reinstall with the licensed version for multiple licenses, the published courseware still times out, even if it is published from a licensed version based on a trial version with the serial number added.

[S_Ayyappan]

Hi Marion,

Once again, sorry about the confusion and rework this caused.

It is not required to uninstall the existing version and then install a new licensed version. You can directly license your installed trial, and then republish your project using this new version- and the published course should no longer expire.

We’ve tested this workflow across multiple machines and have not faced an issue.

If you are facing this issue, it would help if we can get on a Connect session investigate this further on your set-up. Please suggest a time (preferably morning US eastern time, or late evening US eastern time).

You can reach me on shameer at adobe dot com

Thanks,

Shameer

Shameer Ayyappan

Sr. Product Manager - Captivate | eLearning Suite | Presenter

http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate

http://facebook.com/adobecaptivate

Adobe Captivate Forum<http://captivate.adobe.com/

[JudyWiessner]

Hi Shameer,

If you read up in the thread, you'll find that the ONLY way I could get the published versions without the timeout was to uninstall and reinstall.  RobinDR had the same issue - possibly because we both applied a multiple-license serial number to a trial version.

It is too late for discussions, I'm afraid - our team had to uninstall, reinstall and republish over the weekend in order to meet the client's deadline of today.  This has cost us a lot in time and work, not to mention frustration.

Sankaram,

Yes, we restarted Captivate - we were using it over the course of weeks before we we found our published courseware was timing out.

Mraion

[lormof]

I not only had published projects expire within my trial period, I had other projects that were dated outside of my trial expiration that also expired.  I had to republish close to 50 projects.

[JudyWiessner]

Lormof, did you have a multiple license?  Some of us who have had this problem did.

[lormof]

No, I did not have the multi-site license. 

I now have the yearly subscription optionof version 6.  I started with version 5.5. single PC copy.  Within days of my trial expiring and starting the 5.5 single-use subscription, version 6 came out.  I then started working with the 6 trial.  I had completed projects using both trials (5.5 and 6).

[Sankaram]

Hi Marion,

    Did you re-start captivate after you entered serial number? For serial number to take effect we need to re-start captivate.

Thanks,

Sankaram.