Adobe Captivate 5: Styling with Object Styles

by Kevin Siegel

How many times have you had to update the appearance of objects in Captivate and the pesky Apply to All feature simply didn't work? If you've tried to update Captivate's text captions across an entire project, then you know how truly hit or miss the process can be.

Over the past couple of weeks I've touched on some of the wonderful new features you'll find in the upcoming Captivate 5. This one ranks in the top two or three: Object Styles. For the first time in Captivate history, you'll be able to create, edit and use styles for many of Captivate's standard slide objects. This feature effectively replaces Design Templates introduced in Captivate 4.

Using Caption styles, you can alter the way text captions will appear in a project. Once you set up the appearance of the default Caption Style, new captions will take on the attributes of the style and save you a ton of manual formatting. Want to update the appearance of your project's text captions months from now? Simple. Update the style and BAM! Every text caption will follow the lead of its style.

To edit the Default Caption Style, choose Edit > Object Style Manager. From the top of the Object Style Manager dialog box, select Default Caption Style (there are also defaults for Success, Failure and Hint Captions).

You can use the Caption area at the right to specify a Caption type. From the Character area, you can select a font Family, Style and Size (such as Verdana, Regular, 16). From the Format area, you can specify the alignment both horizontally and vertically. And there are other formatting options available.



When you insert new text captions (via Insert > Standard Objects > Text Caption), each new caption will follow the formatting specified in the style. Cool!

Of course, here's where things get interesting. I added several captions to a slide. Each used the Default Caption Style. Next I did the unthinkable--I manually changed the appearance of each caption. What a mess!



You might want to stand back a bit... this next step just might leave a mark. I selected all of the captions that I fouled up. Then, from the top of the Properties panel, I clicked the Reset Style button.



And Bam, Bam, Bam! All of the text captions once again followed the formatting I specified in the object style!

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Looking to learn Captivate? We have a couple of options... we offer two online classes (Beginner and Advanced). Click here for details on the Beginner class. Click here for details on the Advanced class. We also have a 3-hour class devoted to Advanced Actions. Click here to learn more about that class.

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Comments

[Anne]

Yes, I found this.
My worry is: how to set my preferences for the "highlight boxes"?
I've created a new style but it is not listed in the choices for the "highlight boxes", only for the "caption boxes".
The Styles Manager doesn't help.

Thanks
Anne

[Bill McKenna]

I was told that Adobe Captive could export in .mov format so I can use projects on the iPad. I downloaded the trial version but can not find this option. Any input?

[Raymond Sugel Sr]

The object styles in Cap 5 have been helpful in making my presentations more consistent. However I've found that if you change a caption style, any formatting of the text (bold, italic, underline, etc) within the caption gets wiped out. Then it's back to the storyboard to figure out what the ISD had emphasized.

[Mindy Bush]

I've searched the forums, and I'm not seeing any option to update the default TEXT for a success caption. Do you know of a way?

I post that question to this particular blog post because that's the only feature that you didn't address. Thank you for all of the information!

Thanks very much for the help!