Captivate 2019 Crashes When Pasting Button Objects

[B_P_H]

Using Captivate 2019, build 11.5.5.553 on Windows 10 Pro.

I've had very few problems with Captivate until yesterday. My projects use smart shape navigation buttons with simple advanced actions. Starting yesterday, whenever I copy and then attempt to paste a button to another slide, I get a message with: "A fatal error has occurred and the application is being terminated..." (image attached) and Captivate crashes. This was not an issue previously as I had copied and pasted the same button two days ago in the same project. Thinking something was wrong with my project, I opened a previously completed project and tried the same thing with the same result. This tells me there's an issue with the program, not the project.

I cleared my cache and reset preferences to no avail. I hadn't even thought of updating until I saw something on another post. I updated to the current build and the problem remains.

This occurs with most objects set to Use as button that also use advanced actions. I found a workaround, which is to change the button action to No action, copy and paste, then reapply the action.
Captivate also crashed upon initially opening this morning and again after I did the update (image attached).

Need help resolving this as it is hampering my productivity.

Thank you.

[Lilybiri]

Please insert the screenshots as images, instead of attaching them. Attachments need to be downloaded, opened in an appropriate application, and the deleted again. I confess, didn't look at your screenshots.

Did you clean the Preferences after updating? I use the same version, and have tons of advanced and even more shared actions. Whenever possible I avoid copy/paste, have an inbuilt fear of using Win's clipboard.  

[RodWard]

The issue might also be with the specific component you are trying to copy or with previous projects.

Try opening a couple of new blank projects and try copying buttons from one to the other.  Does Captivate crash then?

If not, try copying those buttons into your problem project to see if it crashes.

Also try copying the possibly faulty component button into a blank project to see if the issue is actually the button.

Sometimes these issues are due to small inconsistencies in Captivate versions.  Are you certain that your Captivate version has all recent patches and that all projects have been upgraded and SAVED to that very latest version of Captivate BEFORE you try copying components from one to the other?

[Lilybiri]

@RodWard OP mentions his use of 11.5.5.553 which is indeed the most recent version of Captivate for Win. If you want to tell that the source project needs to be updated to that version before copy, just ignore my comment. 

[B_P_H]

Lieve and Rod,
Thank you for your timely replies - I've learned much from both of you, as well as Paul Wilson and others.
I want to be clear this is happening within the same project, when copying from slide to slide, and only started two days ago.

Lieve, here is the image, which is the same message when it crashed on opening (that has not happened again):

Rod,
I performed all the steps you suggested to no avail. I did the following:

1. Cleared Preferences again (after upgrading Captivate).
2. Cleared the cache.
3. Opened each of the projects, saved, and closed.
4. Created a new project with a couple of the buttons with the same advanced actions. I was able to copy from slide to slide in the new project, as well as to the existing project.
5. I copied one of the problematic buttons to the new project without issue.
6. I copied all the buttons from the project to the new project without issue.
7. And to top it off, I copied the same button from the new project, back to the current project without issue - the problem only happens within any of my existing projects, when I copy from slide to slide.

Frustrating to say the least.

[Lilybiri]

Thanks for the screenshot. That is a very general message, doesn't tell anything. There may be a bug log, not sure.

I didn't mention this, but whenever possible I use shared actions instead of advanced actions. Especially when I need to copy/paste.  Learned from experience. 

[B_P_H]

I found the problem. Right after I posted my last, I started Captivate and got a message that I was low on disk space. Sure enough, I had less than 2 GB. I cleared Users>Me>AppData>Local>Temp to gain some free space and all is good now. My company file storage is on OneDrive, so we have small hard drives ~110GB. However, my cache is on my C: drive because Captivate does not play well with OneDrive. After some recent updates, the temp folder got filled - I'll have to keep an eye on that. Thanks again for your replies. 

[B_P_H]

Unfortunately, the behavior of Captivate crashing when copying and pasting a button continued the next day. It appears that it was a fluke that it worked a couple of times after clearing up disk space. I was able to take another step in troubleshooting by trying the same file on a completely different computer and I had the same result. Sadly, this problem exists in our templates with which several of my projects were built. I will attempt to rebuild the buttons in the template. Hopefully this will resolve the issue. Still frustrated but I can deal with it.

[RodWard]

If you have been using these "templates" for some time, you may need to accept that it is the template files that are corrupted, not just the buttons.

If your templates are CPTL files, stop using them.  There are a number of bugs in CPTL that Adobe has never addressed (despite being told for years). If you have been using the recommended method of using a CPTX file set to READ-ONLY as your template, then this file may have become corrupted at some point and this would cause all files spawned from the original CPTX to also be corrupted.

If this is the case, you should probably look at building an entirely new template in the very latest version of Captivate.  Upgrade all projects to the latest version, and then try copying content from your older projects into the new template structure.  It's a lot of work, but copying slide objects tends to strip out corruption.  If you seem to get encouraging results from doing ONE project this way, then proceed.  If the issues remain, and you have not been able to isolate the cause at all, then you may simply need to rebuild your projects entirely.

[Lilybiri]

That is new information 'templates'! Similar to Rod I recommend since years never to use cptl-files, especially when they include advanced actions and variables. But your interpretation of the word 'template' may be different, it is possible that you don't use cptl-files.

Even if you talk about a Theme instead of a template, the update to the most recent version may not have updated the Theme in a correct way. Themes have changed in version 11.5. If your Theme is rather old, many changes have happened. For each new version a Theme should be double-checked and updated. Since you have advanced actions, if they are not on the master slides, they will not be in the Theme. Reason why I point again to Shared actions which can be transferred much easier and without issues between projects.

[B_P_H]

No, they are not CPTL file format - just standard project files, nor are they paricularily old - all built within the last year. My only concern with all this info is that this is a new problem discovered within a current project in which I was able to perform the same action previously. But since the problem exists on another computer, with its own installation of Captivate, it does point to a problem with the project file.
Yes, I've resigned myself to rebuilding the template - thankfully it's only two files. Thanks again for your responses.

[Lilybiri]

And think about the shared actions suggestion as well...

[907evangeline]

I had this issue. I opened a new project and pasted the button there. Then, I copied the button I just pasted into the new project and was able to paste it into the original project without crashing Captivate. Hope this helps.