Presenter 360: How Quizzes and Interactions Are Stored

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When you insert a quiz or interaction into a Presenter 360 course, a copy of the original *.quiz or *.intr file is stored in the *.ppta file for your course. So if you lose the original quiz or interaction file, you'll still be able to edit and publish it in Presenter.

How does Presenter know which version of the quiz or interaction to use?

When you preview or publish your course, Presenter compares the timestamps of the original quiz or interaction file and the copy stored in the *.ppta file. Presenter will use whichever version is newest.

  • If the original quiz or interaction file is newer than the copy in the *.ppta file, the copy will be updated to match the original.
  • If the original quiz or interation file is missing, Presenter will use the copy stored in the *.ppta file.

We recommend creating an Articulate Package before moving your project files to a different computer or sharing them with another developer to keep all the project files intact. But even if the quiz and interaction files are missing, the good news is that you'll still be able to edit and publish them.

How can I extract the quiz and interaction files from my *.ppta file?

Although Presenter will continue to work if your original quiz and interaction files are missing, there may be times when you need to reuse those quizzes or interactions in other courses. Here's how you can recover them from the *.ppta file:

  1. First, download and install 7-Zip. It's a free, third-party extraction tool.
  2. After installing 7-Zip, right-click your *.ppta file, scroll to 7-Zip, and choose Extract to "<name of your project>".
  3. A folder with the same name will be created in the same location as your *.ppta file. Open it to see the extracted contents. (You won't be able to decipher or use some items.) Open the embedded content folder.
  4. There will be one or more numbered folders. Open each of the numbered folders until you locate the quiz and interaction files you're looking for. Feel free to rename the files or move them to another folder.

If you need help recovering quiz or interaction files, send us your project files, and we'll be glad to help.