To play a Flash file in your presentation, follow these steps:

1.     Install the Macromedia Flash Player on your computer.

2.     In normal view in PowerPoint, display the slide on which you want to play the animation.

3.     On the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Control Toolbox.

4.     In the Control Toolbox, click More Controls (the button with the hammer and wrench icon).

5.     In the list, scroll down and click Shockwave Flash Object,

6.     Click and drag on the slide to draw the control. You can resize the control after the activity is added by dragging the sizing handles if you need to adjust it to the size of the animation.   

7.     Right-click the Shockwave Flash Object, and then click Properties.

8.     On the Alphabetic tab, click the Movie property.

9.     In the value column (the blank cell next to Movie), type the full drive path including the file name (for example, C\:My Documents\MyFile.swf) or Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to the Flash file that you want to play.

10.   To set specific options for how the animation plays, do the following, and when you're done, close the Properties dialog box:

§  Make sure the Playing property is set to False.

11.   To run the animation: With the slide displayed in normal view, click the Slide Show button in the lower left of the PowerPoint window (or press F5, or, on the Slide Show menu, click View Show).

12.   To exit the slide show and return to normal view, press ESC.

13.   You can now size the flash object to fit the activity.  

Here is a course built by Tom Kuhlmann at Articulate on how to use web objects in Articulate. Activity Spice activities work perfectly as web objects and the hosting feature for Premium members makes it even easier:

http://www.articulate.com/community/blogdemo/webobject/player.html  

Adding Spice activities to Captivate can be achieved one of two ways:

My favorite: Use a button:

1. From the Insert menu, click Button.

2. Next, set the On Success option to Open URL or file. Paste the url for the hosted activity in the Open URL or file field.

3. Finally, set it to open in a new window by clicking on the arrow next to the url and selecting New.

Your activity will now launch from captivate.

 You can also do this using a click box.

Activity Spice users can make their activities "blend in" with their current course by using the General Properties button.

Simply click the General Properties button and set the background for Solid Color.

Then you can select whatever color matches your learning course.

Click Apply and that's it! The activity will now blend into your course.

Inserting flash activities into Articulate Presenter can be accomplished this way:

Insert as a Web Object

You can have your activity display inside the Articulate Course Frame as though it’s part of a PPT page using these directions.

1. First, the flash needs to be loaded to a web page.
2. Next, go to the page where you want the activity to appear and click the Articulate Menu.
3. Select Insert Web Object.
4. Click Next.
5. Type the exact web address where your swf is loaded in the Web Address field.
6. Display In Articulate Player. Click Next.
7. Specify the window size. Note: The default activity size is 550 x 450. Try Full Slide first.
8. Make sure the check box is enabled that reads: Set this Slide’s Navigation to Advance by User. (This means the learner gets to click on things in the swf - which is the whole point!)
9. Click Next. Click Finish.
10. You’ll see a light blue slide with some text about the web object now in your PPT.
11. Now publish your course and test!

If you have directions on how to insert an activity into your favorite tool - send it to leighanne@instructionalspice.com.  I’ll post it with your name and email address to our Instructions section.