Adobe Captivate 4: Project Templates... A Strong Foundation For New Projects

by Kevin A. Siegel 

If you want to take the best components of any Captivate project and use them over and over, you can save any of your existing Captivate projects as a project template. The next time you create a Captivate project, you can use the project template and quickly produce a new project that contains those "best in class" components from the template.

A good project template will contain, at the very least:

• An introduction slide
  
• A conclusion slide
  
• A customized skin
  
• Document Info
  
• Variables, widgets and actions as appropriate
  
• Project Start and End settings
  

To create a project template...

1. Open an existing project and choose File > Save As (or create a project template from scratch by choosing File > New > Project and selecting Project Template from the Create tab).
   
   
2. Choose Adobe Captivate Templates (*.cptl) from the Save as type drop-down menu.
   
   
3. Give the template a name and click the Save button.
   
   Notice that the project name that appears in the title bar now includes the CPTL extension of a project template.
   

To use a project template...

1. From the Create Project area on Captivate's Welcome screen, click From Template.
   
   
   
   The Open dialog box will appear.
   
   
2. Open your template.
   
   The new project that is created will be untitled, even though you opened the template. Notice also that the project's name contains a CP extension, indicating that it is a Captivate project, not a template.
   
   Other than the file name extension, your new project is identical to the template you created in every way and it has all of the settings of the template.
   
   
3. Choose Insert > Recording Slide.
   
   The Record additional slides dialog box will appear. Select the options in this dialog box to suit your needs and then click OK.
   
   The red recording area will appear with the control panel. At this point, you will record your lesson using the capture method and settings as appropriate.
   

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Comments

[sc]

I'll be eternally grateful if you can tell me/us how to apply a Project template (not a design template) to existing Projects. :-)

I ask this, in specific, because AFAIK one cannot add a graphical header to a Project template.

[Kevin Siegel]

You cannot apply a Project template to projects "after the fact." However, you can create a new project that uses the project template. Then import the assets from the old project via File > Import > Slides/Objects from the old project into the new one.

Kevin

[sc]

Thank you for your very quick reply Kevin. You may delete my duplicate questions. Sorry, I was a little too enthusiastic about this.

I actually tried the Import idea but I thought it did not work, because the header graphic (from the Project template) did not get copied to each slide. Inspired by your instructions, I found that I could block all the slides in the filmstrip and duplicate paste the header on to each slide all at once.

Is this the 'best' way to do this or is there another way?

Other than the header, the import feature does work!

Thanks again :)