Linking .exe Projects

I am currently working on a Captivate 2 project.
In the past I have had to break up projects because of the memory issue and link them together. I have always done this using the .swf output. To make life a litttle easier I am looking to link 3 short .exe projects, but I seem to be having no luck doing this.
What I have tried is using a button on the last page to "Open URL or file". I have all 3 projects I want linked together in the same file, and have tried several method of addressing the link, but so far none have worked. One attempt even succeeded in opening a google window searching for the exe. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Thanks,
W. Keith

Hi there
Instead of using Open URL or File try using Open other project. What you will do then is to browse to and select the .CP file of the next project.
Don't sweat the fact that you are pointing to a .CP file. Captivate will magickally sort what it needs internally.
Then all you have to do is to ensure that both the EXE outputs are in the same location after you create the output.
Cheers... Rick
Click here for Adobe Certified Captivate and RoboHelp HTML Training
Click here for the SorcerStone Blog
Click here for RoboHelp and Captivate eBooks

Similar Messages

Linking to exported files from .exe project file

Hi,
I've read several posts regarding this issue, and it doesn't seem as though anyone has come up with a solution, but I thought that I re-energize the discussion.
I have a pretty large project and have encountered many problems while trying to compile it with Captivate. I've finally streamlined the project by creating mini swfs and inserting them as an animation on various slides within the overall project file and have been able to get the entire project to play in the preview modes pretty smoothly (with some minor issues that I'll save for another post). All links and buttons have remained in tact, and we are now experiencing very little sluggishness. I had hoped to package this project on a CD for beta-testing today. However, when I attempted to publish what I was hoping to be the final project file this afternoon and selected the .exe option, none of the linked items (swfs, pdfs) launched when tested.
Now, during the publishing process, I do receive the following message:
The file / projects linked below are linked to the open project. The linked files / project may require exporting.
It is also important to copy all referenced files and projects with their corresponding html files to the output folder.
Ok, "may require exporting" to where? All of the linked files are located in the same folder as the .exe file (pdfs, swfs, htms, etc.). What output folder is the message above referencing? I made sure that I didn't place any of these files with the exception of the pdfs into a separate folder so that they would be easily accessed. My back is truly against the wall here since I've been troubleshooting a host of issues with this application for weeks now and this project is supposed to be ready for prime time. Since Adobe doesn't support Authorware anymore and has been pushing this app down our throats the ability to obtain support and / or solutions to these types of problems does not meet the needs of the user. Does anyone have a solution which does not include the Aggregator?

Hi there
I believe I may be the one that assisted with the files.
I'd like to address some comments if I may.
MMCwebs wrote:
... I did receive some assistance from one of the gurus who created swf files for each pdf which assisted me in resolving the problem for that particular project,
however, those files only open the file names that were programmed into
the swf. I was never able to get him to provide me with the original
file to edit as needed...
The way I do these is by using a companion application that shipped with Captivate 2 and 3 called "MenuBuilder". There was no overt and secretive reason for not providing the source. The real reason behind it was that I was creating these on my end because the recipient didn't have MenuBuilder. Therefore the source files would be as useful as a buggy whip for making the car run faster. I'd have been more than happy to provide source files as long as they would be useful to someone.
If you have MenuBuilder on your own machine, it's quite simple to create the files. I've documented the steps needed on many occasions here in the forums.
Cheers... Rick
Helpful and Handy Links
Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form
Adobe Certified Captivate Training
SorcerStone Blog
Captivate eBooks

Linking captivate projects?

Due to our network architecture I can only link Captivate
projects via a shared drive. All of my projects are standalone EXE.
I have a course that links 4 modules together. But when you click
the button to open the next module in the course it opens a new
full screen captivate window. thus when the user gets to the end of
the project they must close 4 module windows. Is there any way to
make the previous module close either automatically or when
clicking the button to proceed to the next module?
Thanks!

Welcome to our community, James
I'm thinking you could accomplish it like this. On or very
near the last slide, have the button. The button opens the next
movie via "Open other project". In this case, you would actually
want the "continue playing project" option left turned on.
Configure the end action of the project to be to "Close Project".
(Edit > Preferences > Project node > Start and End node)
The end result should be that the user clicks the button and
the new project loads up and begins to play. And behind that
project is the original ever so briefly before it self terminates
and closes.
Give that a try and see if it works for you.
Cheers... Rick

Aggregator exe project not opening another project

aggregator exe project not opening another project when published.
The same works fine in HTML.
I tried in Captivate 7 and 8 as well.

I'm having a similar issue. I've used a "home" button to return to the main menu of the course. However, all it does is return me to the last screen I was on. I've tried linking the button to a the aggregator htm and to the swf. Neither gives me the results I want. I currently have it set to open in the current window. However, I get the feeling that it's automatically invoking a bookmarking feature and I'm not getting the pop-up box asking me if I want to return to the last screen or not.

Captivate 8 aggregator exe project not calling external files

I published a project as HTML in captivate 8 and then using aggregator i published it as exe.
Now the exe project does not call the pdf files attached to it. While the same was working fine in the HTML version.

I'm having a similar issue. I've used a "home" button to return to the main menu of the course. However, all it does is return me to the last screen I was on. I've tried linking the button to a the aggregator htm and to the swf. Neither gives me the results I want. I currently have it set to open in the current window. However, I get the feeling that it's automatically invoking a bookmarking feature and I'm not getting the pop-up box asking me if I want to return to the last screen or not.

Link between Project and Sales Order

Apart from sales order can we have a link between project and customer master ??
I know that WBS element assignment can be made in sales order but i want to have link between
customer master and project. I don't want any user field or text field in sales order.
Any idea ?
Regards
Ashish

Yes Mr Ashish!
As far as iam concern there is no link between Project & Customer Master, you have to link it with SALES order, I had check in XD03,XD01, the complete customer master, i didnt find any field in customer master which links with Project.
I'll let you know if i find any links.
Regards,
ANSAR

File not found in Link Between Projects Window - test no edit rights to other file

Hi,
I am doing a test to see if i can create a link by typing the link path (f.i. <>\plan2\1) in the predecessor column without having edit rights to the other plan.
I expect this to be possible as the edit in the other plan (creation of link) is only done after the change is accepted through the LBP (link between projects) window. Besides, when i do it to both my own plans, in this LBP window i get 'create external
link' as difference to accept.
When I do it on Project Server 2010 to a plan I do not own or having edit rights on, I got the message 'file not found'.
Is this message related to what I am trying or does it have another cause?
Does someone know if what I want can be done?
Rgds
Sander

Hi Sander,
I confirm that for creating a link between projects, you need to have access in read-write to both files.
Indeed creating such a link will write in both files information about successors (in the source file) and predecessors (in the destination file).
Note that if you only need to update the successor, you don't need anymore to open in read-write mode the source file, since you won't write any more information in it.
Hope this helps.
Guillaume Rouyre - MBA, MCP, MCTS

PDF art in FM gone in linked RH project output

I'm using TCS2 to link FrameMaker 9 books into RoboHelp 8 projects. In my book's FM files, there are many anchored frames containing PDFs imported by reference. (This is a practice that's been recommended by Dov Isaacs of Adobe and seems to work fine in all other respects.)
When I link the Frame book into a RH project (following the tutorial by RJ Jacquez), the PDFs are incorrectly rendered as solid white images with the correct dimensions but no image content. JPGs and PNGs from Frame work fine, but the PDF-based images look better than the others in my regular PDF deliverables. Also, the larger size of the JPGs and PNGs causes so much overhead in FrameMaker, I can barely scroll them. Open and close times are likewise unacceptable.
Has anyone else encountered this Tech Comm Suite problem with PDF-based images in FM not being converted properly in a linked RH project, and if so, do you know of a fix or workaround?
Thanks in advance,
- Dan Thornton

I'm using TCS2 to link FrameMaker 9 books into RoboHelp 8 projects. In my book's FM files, there are many anchored frames containing PDFs imported by reference. (This is a practice that's been recommended by Dov Isaacs of Adobe and seems to work fine in all other respects.)
When I link the Frame book into a RH project (following the tutorial by RJ Jacquez), the PDFs are incorrectly rendered as solid white images with the correct dimensions but no image content. JPGs and PNGs from Frame work fine, but the PDF-based images look better than the others in my regular PDF deliverables. Also, the larger size of the JPGs and PNGs causes so much overhead in FrameMaker, I can barely scroll them. Open and close times are likewise unacceptable.
Has anyone else encountered this Tech Comm Suite problem with PDF-based images in FM not being converted properly in a linked RH project, and if so, do you know of a fix or workaround?
Thanks in advance,
- Dan Thornton

Linking Two projects in oracle projects

Dears,
I need to know how it's possible to link two projects together in one project?!
Regards,,
Ahmed Fazary

Hi,
Are you expecting project program related functionality. A program is a group of related projects linked together in a hierarchy. If you define the project as program then u can link multiple project under the program.
Govind

Autonumber formats change after topics are linked across projects

We are going from Robohelp HTML x5.0.2 to Robohelp HTML 8.0.2.208, so there is obviously a huge learning curve that we are working through. We generate to WebHelp and merge 15 projects into a published master. Our users view the output on our intranet using Internet Explorer 7.
We loved the autonumber format feature in version 8 (particularly the additional bullet styles available and no longer needing to manually renumber steps when something was inserted or deleted), but have run into a problem.
The autonumber items work fine in the projects and when generated and published into the merged master, but when we need to add a link from a topic in one project to a topic in another project it changes the bullets and numbering.
Example:
We have a topic in Project A that references a topic in Project B (both projects are part of the merged master).
We insert a link in the Project A topic to the topic in Project B (using Insert Hyperlink - Link To - File). Everything in both A and B look fine at this point.
We preview the topic Project A by clicking on "View Selected Item" (eyeglasses) and then click on the link we inserted to validate it works. This causes the topic in project B to now have stutter-text for bullets and numbers (i.e., what used to say "1. Step" now says "1. 1. Step"). As more links are added to that topic, it adds more bullets and numbers to the linked topic:
1. 1. 1. Procedure
● ● ● Bullet
o o o Bullet2
§ § § Bullet3
□ □ □ Bullet4
This does not happen when adding links to topics that are in the same project, only when linking to topics that are in another project.
All of our topics are created directly in RoboHelp; we do not import files from Word, FrameMaker, etc. Each of our projects has the same style sheet (we created 1 CSS file and copied it into each project so that they were all identical).
All of our version 8 projects were created from scratch in version 8, and we have been importing our version 5 topics one by one (and deleting the version 5 styles assigned to them), then applying the applicable version 8 style to each line. We have attempted creating brand new topics in version 8 to make sure no old legacy version 5 code imported from an old project was causing the issue, and it still happens. We have tried manually cleaning up the HTML code for the topic and it happens again once a cross-project link is added back to that topic. We also tried the "Convert RoboHelp edited topics to HTML" to try to get around the XHTML restrictions and it still happened to everything that was an autonumber format, so it appears the issue is something with that one of these. We created styles for each autonumber format we wanted to use (using the options available for Paragraph styles in the Robohelp Style editor), this is a sample of one of them:
p.Bullet {
 list-style: rh-list;
 x-list-class: rl-p-Bullet;
 x-list-level: 1;
rh-list.rl-p-Bullet {
 x-level-count: 1;
 x-lvl-1-format: "<x>";
 x-lvl-1-type: disc;
While it would be really great to have the additional features of the autonumber format, it may not be a viable option for us since it is only available on the paragraph level and Robohelp 8 does not appear to play well with bullets and numbers in anything other than the list level. I'm thinking I may need to abandon our current style sheet that uses autonumbering and start over with a new style sheet using only the limited bullets and numbering available on the list level (or possibly go old-school and just use the bullet and number toolbar buttons to add formatting to normal text). We are about 8,000 topics into our conversion of 40,000. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I'd love to send you the test projects I set up, but unfortunately my company has blocked that ability. I created brand new blank projects in Robohelp 8 using the default style sheet with an autonumber bullet and numbered step added and nothing else. I thought this bare-minimum approach would be the best way to make sure it wasn't something we had set up incorrectly that on our end. I used the default First Topics in each project and added numbered and bullet texts using the style sheet to Project 1 and then added a link to that topic in Project 2. I didn't even generate the projects and I still had the issue when I previewed the Project 2 topic and clicked the link.
I've attached a copy of the info on the topic in Project 1 and the code behind the scenes for it below:
First Topic
1. 1. 1. Procedure
o o o Bullet
o o o Bullet
2. 2. 2. Procedure
Code before link in Project 2:
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Procedure" ?>Procedure<?rh-list_end ?>
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Bullet" ?>Bullet<?rh-list_end ?>
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Bullet" ?>Bullet<?rh-list_end ?>
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Procedure" ?>Procedure<?rh-list_end ?>
</body>
</html>
Code after link in Project 2 was added and clicked:
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Procedure" ?>1.     Procedure<?rh-list_end ?>
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Bullet" ?>o       Bullet<?rh-list_end ?>
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Bullet" ?>o       Bullet<?rh-list_end ?>
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Procedure" ?>2.     Procedure
Code after link in Project 2 clicked a second time:
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Procedure" ?>1.     1.     Procedure<?rh-list_end ?>
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Bullet" ?>o       o       Bullet<?rh-list_end ?>
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Bullet" ?>o       o       Bullet<?rh-list_end ?>
<?rh-list_start level="1" an="1" class="rl-p-Procedure" ?>2.     2.     Procedure
Logically there is no reason that clicking on a link that is outside of the project should be able to recode the topic being displayed, but it is.

Can I link multiple project files together?

I'd like to link multiple project files together so that they will play one after another. Can you do that in Captivate?

Hey Leslie,
Yes, you can create several projects in Captivate and publish them as Flash (SWF) format. There is an aggregator project in Captivate where in you can combine all these published projects (SWF) into a single output.
Do you have any other requirement as well?
Thanks,
Anjaneai

Unable to launch .exe projects from w/in Captivate

I have a large project in .exe format (>250 slides) so I'd like to break it up into smaller projects.
I created a navigation slide at the end of each small project to allow users to launch any of the five or so .exe files available.
When a user double-clicks on the first .exe project to start their training -- no problem.
But when they try to launch an .exe from *within* the Captivate slide, they get error messages about "unknown publisher" for the .exe file.
See the errors here:
http://screencast.com/t/cAGd0l1As
Obviously, there are security concerns about launching .exes, but if the user can launch an .exe from the desktop, why can't they launch it from within Captivate.
A colleague told me that it may have to do with unsigned activeX controls (btw, we can't afford to sign these).
But why are browser active X controls being invoked? The whole point of using the .exe format (for us) was to avoid the browser.
I tried changing the action (On Success: Open URL or file) to (On Success: open another project) b/c I thought it might get me away from the browser, but .exe is not "another project" for Captivate.
Bright ideas? Thoughts? We are running this in a closed environment so we may be able to loosen up security a bit but we can't do anything too crazy.

We need to teach people to use keyboard commands. In other words, they need to issue keyboard commands to make things happen, rather than only clicking on the screen.
Unfortunately, most keyboard commands do not work in .swf format, as we found out very painfully about 6 months ago, after much work. They work in Preview mode, but not once you publish the file. Let that be a lesson to all developers not to rely on Preview modes -- a good general rule -- and one that I should not have broken.
The browser reserves many keyboard commands for its own use. I'm not 100% sure why Preview works while a true published .swf does not (they both use the browser) but it's not very important from a practical point of view.
Adobe identified this as a bug, but that was months ago, and the project must go on. We switched to .exe, which introduced a host of new problems that we are slowly discovering and working through.
The Aggregator seems like great functionality and it's understandable (to me at least) why it would not work with a bunch of .exes -- at least, not without some serious coding by Adobe. But sadly, it won't solve this particular problem!
I think I will have to take my monster training and put it all back into one big and frightening file and then redo the TOC. Or I can make people open each training file separately, which is kind of inelegant. I want them to be able to move through the sections as though they were a single file.
.swf is, all around, a better format and the one that people expect. However, while hard for many to believe, keyboard command training is even more important to this particular set of users!

How to de reporting on links between projects

All,
Whats the best known way to create a report on links between projects. I want to provide the PMO of my customer with a report, where they can see:
1. Delivery dates
2. whether changes are accepted
3. Who is delivering to whom
Regards,
Sander

Hi Sander,
Are you using the
deliverables/dependencies feature? In case you are, I'd suggest you to use the following tables from the Reporting DB:
[dbo.MSP_WssDeliverable]
[dbo.MSP_WssDeliverableToProjectLinks_UserView]
[dbo.MSP_WssDeliverableToTaskLinks_UserView]
You'll find in the 2 last tables the relation between the delivrables. The delivery date will be found in the first table.
Hope this helps,
Guillaume Rouyre, MBA, MCP, MCTS |

Linking EXE to EXE with captivate standalone

hi,
i've a problem.
i've done a standalone project with captivate but there are
some links to external EXE that i would open in a parent
target..while my main EXE is just running..AND NOT IN THE BROWSER
as it is.
if it's more simple to link to external SWF (and not exe) to
have this effect let me say..i could do also in this way.
please, it's very important for me.
thanks to all for your attention,
ivano

Hello ivano,
Just to make sure I understand you correctly - you have links
to external EXEs - and when a user clicks one of those links - you
want the external EXE to open in the Parent window? And, you want
the original movie to keep playing?
Lynn

Trouble linking exe files

Yet another dilemma with my CD project. I published the first
project file (of 9 separate projects) as a standalone .exe file
with an autostart file to burn to cd. I set the END to open another
.exe file. When I view output, it fails to open the second .exe
file. It opens a browser window and says it can't find the .exe
file. All project file names are only 8 characters, so that isn't
an issue. But it shouldn't try to open the .exe file in a browser
window, should it? Is there any reason I can't publish all the 9
projects as standalone .exe files and link them to one
another?

Hi again
Here's the way I would think it would work.
You have a menu and perhaps ten movies. They are all in .EXE
format. The menu.exe would run via autorun.inf as long as nothing
has impeded it. So you have a Menu.EXE running. Your user clicks a
movie link and POOF! The selected movie.EXE plays. But here's the
trick. The movie opens in a new instance of the Flash player. The
Menu.exe is still running. It's simply covered by the new movie. If
the user closes the new movie, the Menu.exe is uncovered. This
allows him/her to open other movies from the menu.
Sorry, no way I'm aware of to speed things along. For one
thing, accessing anything off a CD will be slower to react than off
a hard drive. For another, maybe the movie is simply very large and
would take an inordinate amount of time to open even on a fast hard
drive. Hard to say.
Hope this helps a smidge... Rick

Linking .exe Projects

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for