Summary: If you are using a non-English language version of Windows, make sure that the decimal symbol in your regional settings is set as a “.”
Difficulty: Easy
As you might know, I am not based in the United States, but in Europe. In fact there are Articulate users in more than 115 countries. Most of us speak some English, either because we are from an English-speaking country like the UK, Ireland or Australia for example (my father is English) or because we learnt it at school (or at least we tried!) but not all of us use an English-language version of Windows. I have an English version of Vista and a French version of Windows XP.
About six months ago, one of our users in France noticed an anomaly in the Sync Animation Timings tool and the Timeline Audio Editor when used with a French operating system of XP. Since then, a number of minor issues have been traced to the use of a non-English version of Windows.
The Decimal Symbol is not always the same
It all boils down to the decimal point. In English-speaking countries and a number of other countries in the world, the decimal point is represented by a “.”. When syncing animations, Articulate uses the decimal point to measure times between animations. In many other countries, the decimal point is actually represented by a comma “,”. So when a user has animations of 2.5 seconds, then this is represented in those operating systems as 2,5 seconds and that is where Articulate is led astray and why animations do not sync correctly. Countries which use the comma for the decimal point include France, of course, but also Germany and German-speaking countries, Spain and most of South America, Portugal and Brazil, Italy and most of Western Europe, Poland and most of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Vietnam etc etc. In other words, this issue affects many users.
So what can we do about it?
The solution is simple. If you are using animations in your Articulate presentations, or the Timeline Audio Editor or the Sync Animation Timings feature of Articulate Presenter, be sure to make the following changes to your operating system. You can switch back to your original settings if you like, after you have finished.
- Go the Control Panel and select Regional and Language Options (Options régionales et linguistiques in French).
- Notice that the decimal point in your regional settings is represented by a comma “,”. If it is represented by “.” then there is nothing for you to do.
- Click on “Customize” or “Personaliser” in French and you’ll get something like this:
- Put the cursor in the decimal point box (in French “symbole décimal”) and change the comma “,” to a point “.” and click OK.
- Click OK again and your regional settings will have been changed.
Now you can use Articulate Presenter with the expected results.
