Why are my buttons not working?

[nadiah96175064]

I am new to captivate and am creating some pretty basic projects.  I have created these slides in my projects that have buttons that when clicked, a text box will appear.  I have done this successfully in a few of my projects.  There is only one segment where only 1 of my 15 buttons will work.   I followed all of the same steps and checked my advanced actions.  I know this is super basic but I couldn't find anything on the chat that was specific to my challenge.  Any help is welcome.  Attached is an image of my page.

[Lilybiri]

Can you iinsert a screenshot of the Preview of that advanced action 'SweetAlmond' please?

[nadiah96175064]

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

It is a Show/Hide workflow, where you hide the group of texts and show the appropriate one. That is an older workflow but should work perfectly. I also prefer using a multistate object, because you don't have to reset the slide when revisiting which is necessary with a Show/Hide workflow.

It is not the reason that your buttons are not working, that is sure. It would have been better to use instances of one shared action (two parameters) than 15 duplicates on a slide. Not sure if that can be the reason, although I have debugged files for clients which were choking on a too big amount of duplicate advanced actions. 

All buttons have their pausing point at the same location, which is fine. Since it is an advanced action, the play head will never be released.

Except possible choking (I don't know how many advanced actions you have in the full project) the only problem could be with labeling. Did you ever use the same namefor two different items, even though they are of a different type?  

I am a bit worried about the labels of your decisions as well... those are not the normal generic names: Untitled1_1.... Did you get that advanced action from someone else or from a Quick Start Project? You don't seem to know the Preview button for advanced actions. Have a look at:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/advanced-actions-dialog-box-in-captivate-2017

[nadiah96175064]

Thank you so much for your help @Lilybiri.  You were right about my labels.  I don't even know how there were so many, but that was the problem.  The advanced action for the only button that was working was somehow a label in each of my other advanced actions.  So it was overlaying on the information that was supposed to be shown.  I was able to delete them out and now it is working great!

Thank you for the blog link and I will definitely look more into multistate objects and shared actions for the future.  Thank you again!

[Lilybiri]

Here is a link to a blog about using Multistate objects instead of Show/Hide:

https://elearning.adobe.com/2020/07/why-use-an-empty-normal-state/

Was pretty quickly solved. You definitely should try shared actions for this type of repetitive workflow as well. It is like using the same image over and over again, smoothness of the file and its size will benefit. I have a crash course about using shared actions. You'll find it on my personal blog and in the portal.

[Stagprime]

It is hard to tell from the information provided but I am inclined to think that you have a separate text box object for each of your buttons.

If that is the case, I would ask if you are properly hiding all of the other text boxes each time a new button is pressed...?

If not - newly revealed boxes that are layered underneath the top-most box will not be seen.

I might suggest a single text box that has multiple states. That way when you click a new button proper visibility will be sort of built-in.

Hope that helps.

[nadiah96175064]

Here is a picture of my action.  I have grouped all of my text boxes to "Context2".  So in my action for each button I will hide the context2 and show the specific text box I want shown.  I thought it may be because there are too many buttons as this is the most I have done so far on 1 slide.

[Stagprime]

Is the Sweet Almond the one button that works or is it one of the ones that does not work?

[Lilybiri]

@StagPrime The button is D1. The action triggered is SweetAlmond. The group with all text containers is hidden and one text container is shown. Please...

[Stagprime]

I understand.

The poster has 15 buttons and claims that only one of them works.

My question is simply if the button used for Sweet Almond is the one that works or if it is an example of one that doesn't.

My query is related to behavior as opposed to naming.

Although the button name looks like l1 to me (as in lowercase L)

[Lilybiri]

It is very tiny on my small screen, but I checked that it was different from the action name because that could have been the cause of problems.

Too many duplicate advanced actions may be the cause, hence my suggestion for 15 instances of one shared action.  All have identical duplicate actions. Would be the same for a multistate object, shared actions to be preferred. Although that is less critical to my experience. 

[nadiah96175064]

Thank you so much @Stagprime for your assistance.  This is me a beginner making simple mistakes that take up so much time.  I think when I was duplicating an action and renaming the action details, it still kept the origional action in my labels/tabs.  I did not notice that this happened until @Lilybiri pointed out her concerns about my labels/tabs.  That is why only the origional action I created was the only one showing because you were right, it was layering on top of the designed action.  All solved but thank you so much for your help!

Warmly,

Nadia

[Lilybiri]

Told in my longer comment: please use a SHARED action. Much less chance to choke the slide.