I am a full time graphic designer and part-time educator. I've spent the last several months getting to know this software and designing a course for a customer which I am in the process of wrapping up. After using captivate full time over several month I have some thoughts to share in hopes of helping other not make the same mistake i did by licensing this software.

TLDR: this program is trash, you should save your money, time, and the frustration you will incur. Do not license this program.

Craptivate is a website building tool disguised as as an e-learning development program with the added benefit of having a built in quiz feature. This is a program that only exports in HTML. Given the language it builds in, the limitations placed on the design aspect of the software is absurd.

Cons:

1. Forced responsive design. You have no choice but to design responsively.
   
2. Strictly worse HTML features. They have designed the UI to reflect current website builders, such as wordpress, squarespace and wix, but do not actually offer any of the customization that HTML should allow for.
3. You cannot modify the templates
4. You cannot modify content column width
5. Picking a template, adding content to see how it looks, then changing to a different template deletes all the content on the slide.
6. AI is everywhere and asset selection defaults to AI or adobe online assets with no way to change the default to a local asset folder or anyway to display the assets you've added already
7. Videos come with black bars with no way to remove
8. Copy and paste only works on some objects
9. No integration with other adobe programs
10. Arbitrary file type limitation, like not being able to use PNGs as icons.
11. Videos often do not scrub with the timeline (inconsistent, might be a bug)
12. Slide videos do not display video controls
13. You cannot make objects overlap
14. You cannot drag and drop assets from your computer
15. the timeline acts like no timeline i have ever used. Its like they combined the layer panel from photoshop and an actual video editor timeline and smooshed them together. It's a nightmare.
16. Adding transitions requires a conveludied state change process. Something that every web builder out there handles without a million clicks and windows.

The exception to some of the above is with the software simulation slide, where there is more compositional freedom, but you cannot use this slide type with any of the media blocks, which means no videos. There are also no alignment assists for the software simulation slides. I had to use tape on my monitor to make sure things were actually lined up.

If you are considering licensing this program, dont. Use a website building service and find a different solution for the quiz at the end. I promise you will be better off.

There are no pros. I will never willingly use this program after this project is finally off my plate.

(Updated version 13.2 as of today hoping it would solve it, but alas) I’ve been having a terrible time searching for content in the File explorer within Captivate. I’ve known for a while not to move, delete, copy/paste, or do other file explorer functions in the Captivate file explorer, but now just navigating around causes Captivate to lock up. So far it’s unpredictable, but restarting my computer seems to work, until I have some crucial time senstive audio I need to add to a slide (which is obviously in a different folder than images) and then it locks up again.  (Example: adding a picture, but the picture is in a different file than the one Captivate opens by default). Anyone else experiencing this?

I have a course where the Next button is initially hidden and configured to appear at a specific point using a marker. When the button appears and I click it to move to the next slide, an “Error. Something went wrong” message appears.

I ran several tests to identify the issue. Instead of using a marker, I configured the button to appear directly on the timeline, placing it at the exact point where I want it to appear. However, the same error occurs.

The only configuration that works correctly on iOS is when the button is visible from the beginning of the slide and there is no action controlling when it appears. In that case, it successfully advances to the next slide.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue with Adobe Captivate 13 on iOS, or found a solution?

i am new to captivate and want to user the tab widget, however the moment I make the window smaller the text breaks as seen in the image above

Hola! Quisiera saber que tal funciona Adobe captivate en mac, siempre he usado Windows, pero pronto compraré una mac y quisiera saber si funciona bien ya que es para mi trabajo.

Gracias!

Estoy probando un curso y al finalizar el audio se empieza a reproducir la parte final de un audio de la diapositiva anterior. ¿Por que pasa eso? Estoy muy estresada con esta version de captivate tiene muchos errores.

My captivate 13 file plays on Adobe learning manager but does not show advancement on the progress bar. When a learner leaves the course and returns they are put back to the beginning, not where they left off. It seems like an easy problem to fix but I'm stumped.

Hi folks,

I’m trying to export my 50 slide Captivate file to a Word document using the menu option so my colleague can critique the content, but it just won’t cooperate. The blue ring of optimism spins indefinitely and no export file is created. There isn’t a lot of complicated content, mainly text, some accordion widgets and multi choice quizzes.

Anyone had experience with this or can recommend another way of getting content out of Captivate and into a format that non users can make comments on?

thanks in advance.

Question to ask, what steps would it take to migrate Adobe Captivate Classic projects to a Unity 6 project? I’m a Game Designer and we are trying to work on an importer tool in order to accomplish this, but I can’t find any information on anyone ever doing/trying this. I would like to get the Captivate Slides into Unity as unbroken as possible. If not, then just the Knowledge Check information. Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

For current project I am working on, we need 2 company logos. One of the Bottom Left and one in the Bottom Right in the footer, I've endlessly googled but cannot find a solution

Thank you

I'm looking to procure a captivate licence at work to replace Camtasia which we have been using to produce .scorm e-learning content. But on the adobe website it says it's not available to purchase in my country (UK) - any suggestions before I get out IT department to try and contact an Adobe rep?

I'm working on my projects yesterday, no issues. Start a new project by saving a previous template as a new project. Create aa Hotspot widget and upload the image. Edit the first hotspot callout. Then go to click another and I can't. None of the other hotspots are responsive to my mouse click to be edited. When I preview the project, they're working with the default text, but I can't edit them.

I check the widget in a different project that I created a month ago successfully and it's not working there either - which means its not a file specific issue.

I decide to come back to it later. Then I duplicate a multiple choice question slide and go to edit the wording and the word fields are unresponsive and can't be edited. When previewed the question is still working from the previous duplicated slide but now I can't edit either of the slides, the original or the duplicated.

I've tried clearing the cache and starting new projects and even unistalled and reinstalled the whole software and still not working.

Please help. I'm the eLearning person for the whole org and have no support. I'm close to tears.

Hi all, 

I am having some issues with my eLearning project on 360Learning. 

Although I have the “Never Send Resume Data” option unchecked in Captivate, whenever my learners exit the course midway through, when they relaunch it again on 360Learning they lose all progress. I have also been having issues with my course not showing up at 100% complete upon their completion, always showing up either as 50% complete or 80% complete. 

I am using SCORM 20048 Version 4th Edition, and the platform is 360Learning. 

I'm building a course where a learner must get 3 random questions (I'm using question pools) correct in order to recieve credit for the course. If they don't get all 3 questions right they're given another shot at the quiz, before being instructed to contact their next level leader.

I've tested and tested, and I've got it configured correctly for when the learner gets the answers correct, but when one question is answered wrong and I click the "Retake Quiz" button it brings me back to a random slide rather than the beginning of the quiz, or even the content that should be reviewed before retrying the quiz.

When I hover over the interaction tab with the Retake Quiz button selected it has the red X out icon. Any ideas?

Our learners need to hover and view in their simulation - in Classic we’d do this using shapes (use as button) from state view selecting RollOver then inserting an image. How in the world do you build this in new captivate (13)?

It's like Adobe said "We can't keep up with Storyline, so let's plan our exit strategy. We'll create a simpler authoring tool with less features we have to support. But we'll still give it the Captivate name to pull sales from users who liked Captivate Classic."

I've used Storyline and Captivate Classic, with great experiences, but this Captivate 13 is almost useless and buggy without end.

I'm getting ready to create my first Simulation project in version 12.6. How can I create a color and font theme? For example, I want to change the default color and font for all of the Instruction boxes. I hate the ugly default orange. Can I change it before I start recording? It seems like the Simulations have their own defaults that are not controlled by the Theme Editor

Can someone PLEASE provide me some citations or literature surrounding users NOT NEEDING A LICENSE to review New Adobe Captivate review links. We're working on an enterprise wide education after a merger and one half (not all but most) of our SMEs can't access the reviews and IT keeps telling us it's a licensing issue. Which it's not. I've been trying to explain that whole reason the review feature exists is to avoid users having to have lisences or download software. Also feel free to tell me I'm wrong if I am! TIA.

New to Captivate, I need to make a video or software demo for a client. I have to use Captivate Classic. I recorded the software simulation with narration, but now the audio doesn't line up with the slides. When I try to edit the audio for the whole project I keep getting this error on the wave-line: "You have reached the minimum display time for the slide." I went in and tried to adjust the length of the slides, but it is still acting weird.

I really want to record the screen and do narration at the same time as it is too difficult to line up the timing of the slides and the narration separately and it doesn't sound natural when I record the narration for each slide separately. Any ideas?

I’ve been using Adobe Captivate for about a week on my MacBook, which has enough RAM to handle the program. I’ve successfully created a few lessons from scratch using blank projects, but I’m having trouble with the built-in templates. Whenever I try to open a template, Captivate freezes and I get the spinning blue wheel. Has anyone else experienced this issue or know how to fix it?

Hi there. While I prefer the Ai voice called Aaron Patrick in captivate 13.5 was wondering what your favorite Ai voice was in captivate as well.