Disappearing Text and Fatal Errors Captivate9

[Motley_Who]

Hi,

I recently opened a file I had been working on for 2 days and noticed all the text had disappeared from the slides. I can see the text in the filmstrip but it's not showing on the main stage. All my shapes, buttons and images are still there and if I click on a shape or text box, the text does come back, at least until I close and reopen the file again. So I tried to preview it to see if the text appeared in preview....got the Fatal Error, must close.. message. Weird thing is I can open a different project that I was working on only a few weeks ago and it looks fine and previews as normal, its just this brand new project.

Of course spent some time googling for possible solutions and found multiple ideas, many on this forum. The common theme was to clear cache (done) and update to V9.0.2.437. I am currently on 9.0.0.223. As its my work laptop I can't update without permission/involvement from I.T dept. I work for a big bank of 50,000 staff with perhaps 20 Captivate Users, as you can imagine I.T is not at all familiar with this program and to arrange a bankwide update may take weeks.

Wondering if anyone has any other possible options for me to take and wondering why a project from a few weeks ago works fine but new one doesn't, maybe there is something I have or haven't done in this new one that could be causing the issue. Many thanks.

[RodWard]

Projects can sometimes become corrupted. One of the most common causes is that users are working on the project files over a network connection rather than on a CPTX file that resides on their computer's local hard drive.

You mention that you are working at a large organisation with an IT department.  So I have to ask the questions:

• What are the Default Locations that you have set in Preferences?  Are they pointing to local hard drive folders or perhaps folders on a network drive?
• When you work on a CPTX file, do you open it from your local hard drive or navigate to it on a corporate network drive?
• When you close down a CPTX file, do you first save and close the file locally (on your hard drive) and then use Windows Explorer to back up a copy of the file to your network?

[Lilybiri]

Supplementary to Rod's advice.

The first release of 9 was pretty buggy, remember that a first fix patch was released within one month, followed by two more later ont. I understand that ti takes a while to install a pathch, but today we are two versions and many years later. It is possible that in this new file you jhave inserted features that were buggy.

[Motley_Who]

Thanks Rod and Lilybiri, Just to clarify, I dont save on the network drive. This file was saved straight to my Desktop, no where else.

Not sure whats gone wrong with this new project, its the first time experiencing this issue even though I have been using this version of Captivate 9 for over 2 years. I ended up starting again from scratch and encountered the same problem, so I opened an older project that I had lying around and inserted the slides from the buggy project into the old project and so far so good.

[RodWard]

Yes but WHERE exactly is your Desktop located?  In many corporate computer setups the user's profile (which includes their Desktop) is actually residing on a network drive, even though the user doesn't detect any difference in performance.

Please open up Captivate, go to Edit > Preferences > Default Locations and show us a screenshot here of what you see on that screen.  I mainly want to see the pathway currently set for those Default Locations for Project Cache and Project Publish folders.

[Motley_Who]

Here you go, thanks Rod.

[RodWard]

Those default locations are all good. I cannot see anything wrong there.  It would appear that your old project must have simply become corrupted somehow.  It can happen.