Ready for the Captivate Transition?
Does your organization use Adobe Captivate for eLearning courses? Your content could be at risk.
What happened?
The rumors are true. Adobe Captivate received a major (content breaking) update.
Perhaps you heard a major version change was coming to Adobe Captivate. Well, it’s here and comes with some huge changes. Originally dubbed Project Charm, this “all-new” version of Captivate was finally released in late 2023.
The substantial update is packed with great new features and an over-hauled user interface that both radically change how courses are built. Unfortunately this breaks compatibility.
Courses built with an older version of Captivate (Classic) are no longer compatible with the new version. Development files even have different file extensions (.CPTX has changed to .CPT).
Support for Adobe Classic is ending soon!
On top of this, Adobe has quietly announced it will end core support for Captivate Classic on 8/23/2026 and extended support on 8/23/2027. Many aren’t aware that after these dates, any older Captivate courses and their .CPT files will be obsolete and at risk of not functioning.
This leaves a small window of time to create and execute a content migration plan.
What does this mean?
This change could impact your organization in two significant ways:
Existing Captivate courses need to be migrated.
Prior to the end of support for Captivate Classic, all courses built using older versions of the authoring tool must have their content migrated or risk not functioning.
Inside this short window of time, a migration plan must be created and executed to ensure courses can still be accessed within your learning management system.
A new authoring tool is needed for course development.
If you develop eLearning courses in-house (or even just maintain them), you will soon need to switch from Captivate Classic to a new authoring tool.
Staff will need to learn how to create courses and utilize new features of the all-new version of Captivate (or a similar authoring tool like Articulate Storyline).
Any previous trainings or certifications employees acquired for Captivate will not apply to the all-New version of Captivate and will effectively be obsolete.
It’s like the Y2K bug all over again (only for some eLearning courses).
Of course Y2K wasn’t the end of the world (thanks to a little planning), and neither is this. But still, courses not working in your LMS is something to take seriously.
A closer comparison might be when Adobe Flash support came to an end on Dec. 31st, 2020. While the world had other things on our mind that year, organizations still had to rush to ensure no eLearning courses were left using Flash. Don’t be caught off guard with this similar transition.
What can be done?
Suarez Media Production can help your organization stay ahead of the curve and be well-prepared for this change in several ways.
Prepare the Organization
To adjust employees to the change, we can host consultation sessions with staff and leadership to raise awareness and help determine which alternative authoring tool is best.
we can also facilitate hands-on training sessions for the All-New Adobe Captivate (or Articulate Storyline).
Create a Strategy
We can help your organization create a full course migration strategy.
Depending on your need, this will likely start with an audit of existing course content and include a detailed migration plan and timeline.
Migrate Content
With a content migration strategy established, we can assist or lead the execution to the transfer all affected course content over into the all-new Adobe Captivate (or Articulate Storyline).
For every migrated course, you will receive all published course files for your LMS and all source files for needed for course maintenance.