Presenter 13 will not display Engage Interactions nor Quizmaker properly in Powerpoint

All of the functionality is there, but when in PP, all I am seeing is the gray slide with the generic thumbnail instead of the image and text I have inserted and saved using Engage. I have no way of seeing the slide content while in PP. In all of the Articulate tutorials, and in all of my experience with Presenter '09, I should be able to see the slide contents in PP. 

This may add some clarity. The below left is my PP view of a course in Presenter '09. On the right is the same slide and course in PP after it has been imported, upgraded to 13 and saved in Studio 13. In Studio 13, I cannot see the contents unless I preview. When I do preview, the contents are correct as last saved. When preview is closed, I revert back to the gray slide PP view. And again, this happens with upgrading of '09 projects, as well as with projects created in studio 13.

Hi Steven! This is the expected behavior you are seeing. If you need to edit the contents, you may do so by selecting the button to Edit in Engage.

It will not look like this when published to your user, but they will have a seamless player to display all of the content. You can control how you want the next/prev buttons to function within your course though. 

How does one identify the contents while in PP? Why does this image of a Studio 13 project open in PP show thumbnails on the left and the image used in the Interaction? I got image by doing a google image search. 

I can easily tell which slides I would be dealing with. I can sort, select, move, duplicate easily.

In my case, I am looking at gray slides and generic thumbnails.

My 09 presentations look like the above when I open them in studio 13. When prompted to upgrade and save, I do so. When the process completes, my PP goes from this, blinks once, and then looks like this:

I'm not sure that I could explain the why Steven, but it only applies to those placeholder slides with imports from Quizmaker and Engage.

That looks like a regular slide to me vs an Engage Interaction.

If you have a file that you'd like me to take a look at, I'd be happy to.

It applies also to slides I create in Engage 13 from scratch.

Attached is a package just created from scratch in 13.

Here is one upgraded from 09 to13.

And this is the response I got when I first encountered this issue in 2014 when demo'ing the first release of Studio. Frustration lead to my putting it off and waiting for updates. Demo'ing the latest updated 13 has proven fruitless. I am now facing the issue again with lots of work ahead getting things to publish in HTML5. Very frustrated.

Rowie Barcelona <support@articulate.com>RE: Case #00380251: I have attempted several downloads, installations and repairs
1/21/14

to me
Hi Steven,

Thanks for uploading your project files and for allowing us to review them. We were able to duplicate the issue you reported. Unfortunately, we were unable to determine a workaround. We have reported this issue to our Quality Assurance team for their review. I cannot offer a time frame for when or if this issue will be addressed but I will keep you posted.

Regards,

Rowie Barcelona
Customer Support Engineer
Articulate Support - http://www.articulate.com/support/

Hi Steven - I wasn't understanding what you were reporting at first. I thought it was the 'gray' area moreso than the placeholder image. Thank you for sharing the details here so that I could fully understand what you were sharing here.

I'm not clear if this is by design from our standpoint, but I will reach out and see if I can get some additional information to share. Thanks for your patience Steven.

Much appreciated.

Any updates on this? My trial is running out and I soon need to decide on my Studio 13 purchase  in order to get html5 compatible. Thank you!

I do not have an update to provide at this time Steven. 

What you are reporting would only affect you as the designer. It would not be seen by your end user.

Understood. But with dozens of courses needing content updates and
publishing to html5, it makes Studio 13 completely ineffective. Having to
use the preview function on every slide just to see what it contains is
going to triple my working time. I would be better off recreating courses
with another tool.

The tech folks said that they have replicated the issue....so I would think
that something so amiss in basic display functionality would set off some
flags. Clearly, the vast majority of users are not experiencing this, and
it is not an intermittent, minor annoyance...nor does it have anything to
do with the way a course is created or published.

I open engage 13, add a picture, type some text. hit save. Close engage.
Open Powerpoint, Create a new presenttion, hit save, hit add an engage
interaction, select the interaction, hit OK, the interaction is added but
displays in the main PP edit screen as a big gray box with a generic
image thumbnail in the upper right corner....I cannot see ANY content that I just created. It
is that simple....and supposedly replicated in Articulate's analysis.

I do not mean to be irate, but I am more than frustrated and time continues
to slip by. Why can't I create or import Engage Interactions that display
properly in PowerPoint using the product installed locally on any of the
numerous machines, operating systems, versions of MS Office that I have
installed, repaired, uninstalled and reinstalled time and time again? It
has never worked...not once.

Believe me, I hope that the tech can find something that makes me look like
a complete idiot for overlooking something ridiculously basic...I just need
to get this solved.

Hi Steven!

I understand. Originally replicated as it was different from upgrading from '09, but this happens in all courses.

I see it as well.

As I mentioned previously, I did reach out to the team for clarification, because I can update the QM preview, but not the Engage placeholders. 

Now...we are at the point of ridiculous. I have purchased a brand new 64-bit Windows 10 HP Spectre. With absolutely nothing done to it out of the box, After initial setup, which followed every Windows recommended protocol for default installations, I purchased, downloaded and installed 64-bit Office 2016 from the Windows store. I then downloaded Studio 13 and installed following all of its recommended protocols. I watched the vsto and other necessary components install.

And you guessed it, I still cannot see newly created interactions in my PP window. After creating, saving and adding to a saved presentation, PP only shows a gray box with a generic image thumbnail in the slide editor main screed. What gives here? Can you please send me a small sample .intr or a presentation so that I may view it in my new setup?

And please include a screenshot of what it looks like in your PP slide editor view. I am really tearing my hair out here,

I feel your frustration, but I've always had Studio 13 (which I bought in 2013).  This is frustrating behavior (not being able to see anything other than a thumbnail that doesn't even represent the content), but I thought it was just the way Articulate built the product.  I didn't realize that Studio 09 had more advanced features.  There are many "little things" that would make life easier to be sure.  And for you, this is obviously more than a little thing.  I called them to find out  when Studio 15 or 16 or whatever the next iteration of this is but on the phone they said they couldn't say.  I'm evaluating alternatives to Articulate but I have soooo much invested. Thousands of hours of work.  At least the support people and the community are quick to respond, even if it's not good news. 

Hi Steven!

There is not a sample that I could send you - as I mentioned above it's happening in all courses.

...but this happens in all courses.

I apologize if I was not clear - my testing indicates it's not just upgraded projects, but all in '13. I've updated the information that was previously shared with our QA Team.

Hi Steven!

I heard back from the QA Team and confirmed that the current thumbnail view is by design and is the expected behavior.

All interactions within Presenter files created or upgraded to Presenter '13, will show a generic thumbnail.

Thank you for looking into it.

I hope this will help others with lots of content to maintain. My reason for pursuing Studio 13 is a desperate need to publish to html5. I am very happy with Presenter 09 and have no reason to move away from it other than the Flash limitation. I have been testing a method described below for the last few days...and it seems to get me to my goal. Here's something that might work for others.

I am set up with Presenter 09 on my Windows 10 machine and will continue to create and edit all of my courses in it. I have created an Oracle Virtualbox instance on the same machine which runs Windows 10 and Studio 13 (Google How to VirtualBox Windows 10 if you need some instruction on how to accomplish this. It will take a few hours to get things humming, but Google is your friend for even the small tweaks needed to get VirtualBox, Studio 13, and access to shared drives working properly....just be patient). And processing power is needed for this, so don't try this on a 5 year old budget laptop.

Back to the courseware maintenance.....Remember to account for the differences between player options in 09 and 13. In other words, create your 09 presentation knowing how it will appear in the 13 player. For instance, remove from your content things like "click in the upper right corner for the glossary" as the glossary is not in the upper right corner in S13).

When your 09 presentation is final, create an Articulate package in PP (Save/File/Send/Articulate Package...making sure to add any attachments to the destination folder), and send it to a shared file location between the 2 Windows instances.

Go to your VirtualBox Windows instance, open and extract the Articulate package, open PP, open the PP presentation, convert to S13, assign your attachments and player preferences...then publish with the options you need. 

A time-consuming workaround...but I have so many courses to manage that I simply cannot manipulate my content if I can't see it in PP.

Hope that helps someone out there.