Adobe Captivate 5 & 5.5: Avoid the Heart Attack... Put It Back!

by Kevin Siegel

I was teaching a session on Adobe Captivate at a conference when I performed an action I have performed at least a thousand times... I opened the Advanced Interactions dialog box (via the Project menu).

While this was  a routine action, the result was anything but routine. The Advanced Interactions dialog box did not appear on my screen and Captivate appeared to crash. I could move my mouse around the screen, but if I tried to click anywhere, I heard an alert beep. Nothing was working in Captivate and I was stuck. This was perfect timing. There were only a few hundred people staring at me. And I'm pretty sure that more than a few attendees were enjoying the show as I squirmed and tried to troubleshoot the issue.

I noticed that if I pressed the [Escape] key on my keyboard, I could continue to work within Captivate, but trying to open that pesky Advanced Interactions dialog box caused my system to freeze each time.

The first thing I tried to do was reset Captivate's Classic workspace (Window > Workspace > Reset Classic). While that seemed like a reasonable course of action, it didn't resolve the issue.

And that's when it hit me. I use two huge monitors in my office (yes, I'm spoiled). When I was at the conference, I was plugged into the conference-supplied overhead--essentially a single huge monitor.

I remembered that when I was last in my office, I had opened the Advanced Interactions dialog box and dragged the dialog box from my main monitor to my second monitor. I had done what I needed to do in the Advanced Interactions dialog box and I had clicked OK.

I did not drag the dialog box back to my main monitor--and I had never needed to worry about doing so in the past. But for whatever reason, Captivate was acting as if I was still working with that second monitor, even though the monitor was not at the conference with me and wasn't listed in my system Display Preferences.

Thankfully there was a second monitor in the room, sitting just to my left on the table. I quickly plugged the second monitor into my laptop and BAM!... the Advanced Interactions dialog box showed up on the second monitor.

Given the fact that I've heard about this issue from several Captivate 5 developers, I would urge you to be diligent when working with dual monitors. If you move something to that second monitor, drag it back to the main monitor... especially if you are going on the road and you're not planning on taking the second (or third) monitor with you.

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Comments

[Christy Tucker]

I've had similar issues switching from dual to single monitor, usually when I walk away with my laptop for a meeting. One trick I figured out to reset it (short of plugging in a second monitor) is to force the laptop back to a single monitor display. Using Fn+F7 or whatever it is on your laptop, you can tell it to go back to the factory default single display. Resetting it should bring the wayward dialog box back into view, and you can then proceed to change the settings back to whatever you need for your presentation.

Just a quick tip for anyone who gets stuck without remembering to move the dialog box back before picking up their laptop!

[Jeff Coatsworth]

This comes up every so often in the Adobe Forums. I've seen it with FM and RH. Once suggestion goes like this:

Press Alt, Space, M.

Press any arrow key.

Waggle the mouse madly until the dialog box appears.

Click to drop it where you want.

[SK]

So that's what happened to my Preferences box during my presentation yesterday ... fascinating! Thanks for tip.