Articulate community to the rescue

Tuesday was a horrible day for me. I was trying to transfer an Articulate project from my deskptop computer to my laptop. Those who have worked with Articulate will know what a pain that can be. Fortunately, the good people in Articulate Towers must have heard the distressed cries of their user base and decided to do something about it. In response to my frantic cry for help on the user forum, someone called beeneeb sent me a link to this information:

If you want to back up all of your Presenter ’09 project files for safe keeping or send them to your collaborators working on the same project - or just send your project to another computer, Presenter ’09 provides a simple and effective tool to package all the necessary files into one zip file. This Send to Articulate Presenter Package feature creates a package of the contents of Presenter ’09, along with any embedded Engage, Quizmaker and other inserted media files (such as Flash movies) so they can be edited on another computer.

1. In PowerPoint 2007, click on the Microsoft Office button. Select Send -> Articulate Package.
   In PowerPoint 2000, 2002, 2003, go to File -> Send to -> Select Articulate Presenter Package.
2. The Articulate Presenter Package dialog box opens.
3. Select the location where you want the package to be created. You can also specify optional Package Notes, including the project name, the version number, the author of the project with email and other special instructions.
4. Click on Create Package.
5. A dialog box tells you if the package was successfully created, giving you the option to view the folder with the package files.

Hallelujah for user community forums. Hallelujah for beeneeb! Hallelujah for Presenter 09! (I have to say that I am thus far very much more impressed with it than I was with earlier versions - it provides far more flexibility to the author)

An email from a customer support engineer gave me this advice:

If you want to move your project files from one computer to another, be sure that you move not only the PowerPoint file but also the Articulate project files. If the project was created in Presenter '09, all project files will be stored in a .PPTA file with the same name as the PowerPoint file (and located in the same folder as the PowerPoint file). If it was created in Presenter 5, all project files will be stored in folder with the same name as the PowerPoint file (and located in the same folder as the PowerPoint file). You will also want to move any quiz and interaction files that you may have created for the presentation as well.

No disrespect to him, but I found the first option easier to understand, so I'm going to give that a go.