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Display All Titles in the Side-Bar Menu of an Articulate Module

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Here is something which I learned quite recent in connection with the designing of e-learning modules. Before reading down, you should be well aware that the e-learning tool which I am talking here about is Articulate Presenter, not Captivate, Camtasia, or anything sophisticated.  

You know about the side bar view of a module published in Articulate. There you have the option to sort the topics into titles and subtitles. The main titles appear along with either numbers or triangular shaped bullets, which point to the right side when we are yet to reach at it (►), and point to down when we are at it (▼). The below picture will clarify my today’s topic of discussion.

As you all know, for defining main titles, and sub titles of 2nd level, 3rd level, etc.,  we need to go to the slide properties, and prescribe in the Level tab, the preferred level number in the corresponding column of the titles. For example, if you want ‘Topic A’ as the main title, and ‘Topic B’ and ‘Topic C’ as the subtitles, in the level tab, change the level of the Topic A as 1, and Topic B and Topic C as 2. After publishing the module, you will see that, The Topic A appears with a bullet at the left, without listing Topic B and Topic C. After you start playing the tutorial, when you reach at Topic A, it will expand automatically, displaying Topic B and Topic C as the subtitles.

But, one day, when my SME asked me to display every topic in the side bar from the beginning itself, irrespective of whether it was a main title or sub title, I got at first confused. I searched everywhere for such an option in the lay out option. The below two pictures can tell you more about the options available in Articulate about the variety of topic displays in the side bar. The levels could be expanded only when the user is inside the level or when the user reaches the heading.

But there is a method to display every topic irrespective of its level in the side bar even at the start of the module. We can’t call it a groundbreaking method. It depends on the ability of the ‘Navigation Title’ area in the ‘Slide Properties’ tab to absorb some specific characters and symbols apart from usual letters. Thanks to the guy, who blogs at Captivating Captivate, for giving me this idea.

Follow the steps:-

1. First go to your Working PPT file, open the Slide Properties tab, and set the levels of all the navigation titles as 1.

2. Open a Microsoft Word document, and from the Insert Symbol option, click on the symbol, ►, that looks like a bullet.

3. Copy the bullet character (►).

4. Go to your working PPT file of the module; go to the Slide Properties tab; paste the copied bullet character in the beginning of every main title. (It is true; you can actually paste a symbol in the navigation title area of the Slide Properties tab.)

5. Put some spaces (say, ten taps on the space bar), before every subtitle to distinguish them from the main title.

6. Press Ok.

After publishing the module, you can see that all titles are displayed even at the beginning of the module as show below.
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