Why is my text box not showing up?

[williamm26083631]

I have a text box that is set on my timeline to appear on the screen 10 seconds into the slide.  When I preview the slide using the preview/play slide feature it works perfectly.  However when I do a preview/project the text box doesn't show up 10 seconds into teh slide like its suppose to.  Is there something that I'm forgetting to do? 

[RodWard]

An F3 type  Preview Slide is NOT publishing any content and will just play along the timeline but the interactivity will not be functional.

I suspect you have some other buttons or interactive objects on the timeline BEFORE your TEB is due to appear and these are pausing the timeline when you do one of the previews that require publishing all or part of the content.  So check your timeline for objects that might be pausing it.

[Lilybiri]

It is very confusing, having the option 'Play Slide' (beware: it is NOT Preview slide) under the button Preview, because this is not a Preview at all. In one week this has to be pointed out in this forum many, many times. It used to be called 'Preview', changed more correctly to Play, a situation that is only meant for editing, for synchronizing. Both for SWF and for HTML output a temporary file has to be created for the real Preview methods. If your goal is HTML and you are on a normal project, the only Preview method available is F11, Preview HTML in Browser. All the other Preview methods use SWF.

Rod's answer about the Timeline is without any doubt the reason of your problem. If you post a screenshot of the timeline, this could be confirmed and explained more in detail.  This is another issue for most newbies to Captivate, the meaning of pausing by interactive objects.

As for the 'text box', is this a static text container (caption or shape used as text container) or a Text Entry Box? The first one is static, has no pausing, the TEB however is interactive and by default has also a pausing point at 1,5secs from the start of its timeline.

More about timeline in this very old post:

Tiny Timeline Tidbits - Captivate blog