"Articulate Presenter Has Stopped Working..." Kind of
Dec 30, 2011
I am experiencing an odd situation and I'm hoping someone can help. I'm at my wit's end.
I have a complex scenario I created in Flash CS5.5. I downgraded to AS.2 and the Flash Player 6 to make it compatible with Presenter. When I drop the scenario into my Presenter project, it hangs on the slide with the flash element in it, and then gives me the "Articulate Presenter has Stopped Working."
So, I remove a bunch of ActionScript from the project and use a timeline approach rather than an AS approach, and the same thing happens.
Then, I create a new PPT file, drop the watered down Flash project into it and it works. The SAME .swf file works in the new PPT/Presenter project, but not the one with ALL OF THE OTHER content for the project. Am I going to have to rebuild my ENTIRE project in the new, empty PPT so that this Flash file works?
I'm fairly new with this product (my client prefers I develop in it) and have found it to be extremely challenging to work with, especially when Flash files need to play with the Articulate files.Is there something going on behind the scenes here?
Oh, I'm using Windows 7, PPT 2007 and the current version of Presenter.
4 Replies
Hi Thomas and welcome to Heroes,
Can you try the following to regenerate the PPTA file on the project that is hanging?
1. Open the Presenter project that is hanging
2. Choose Publish & select the Web tab
3. Publish your project to any folder on your machine
4. When it's done, save your presentation & close PowerPoint. This will regenerate the PPTA file.
5. After that, reopen your project & try to import your file again.
If you continue to have problems, take a look at the file path of your project & make sure that it's less than 256 characters. Also, make sure that you're not working off of a network drive.
Brian - You are my Hero! Thank you!
Is it just me, or are there a ton of these little work arounds for this product. Here is a list of things I've discovered:
1) Cannot use AS 2.0 to call audio or objects from the library
2) Cannot use AS 2.0 to call _root or _parent
3) Cannot use nested movie symbols without being creative
4) Links to external docs disappear after you save the file - I have to reprogram the data/downloads path by hand before publishing every time
5) Hyperlinks to other pages don't work in preview mode only in publish mode (this one killed 6 hours or so)
As long as you don't ask the product to stretch, it's good. However, my clients have been to the Michael Allen school of Instructional Design and the complex interactions are impossible to do without Flash. I've had to break out my old AS 2.0 books to get some of this stuff to work!
Thank you again for your help. Happy New Year.
Hi Thomas
Have you seen these http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=76, we have no problems using flash in Studio as long as we follow these guidelines.
The links break because of a powerpoint fault (it swaps / to \ on reopen) you can write a macro to swap \ for / before you publish
Authoring product like PowerPoint to Flash makes easy to build minus programming skill. This comes with goodness and constrictions. Goodness is no programming required; constrictions is when programming is required, it requires work arounds as you suggest.
I think less problem with application and more nature of using an application that does this kind of work for non-programmers.
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