How to Import Questions into Adobe Captivate (GIFT and CSV)

Adobe Captivate imports questions two different ways, and which one you get depends on the build you have open. Captivate Classic, the 2019 and 11.x line, imports GIFT text files and CSV from the Quiz menu. The rewritten Captivate that replaced it dropped GIFT entirely and imports CSV only, from File, Import, Import CSV, and only from version 12.3 onward. Builds 12.0 to 12.2 have no question import at all.

That split is the reason so much Captivate import advice fails. Adobe kept the older application on sale as Captivate Classic when the rewrite launched, so two very different products answer to the same name, and most guides do not say which one they were written for. Check your Quiz menu before you follow any of them, including this one.

This guide covers both routes: the exact menu paths, the GIFT syntax with worked examples, the escaping rule that quietly breaks hand written files, the CSV column spec, and what does not survive either import. It was checked against Adobe help in August 2026.

Which Captivate version imports which format?

Build	GIFT (.txt)	CSV	Where the import lives
Captivate Classic (2019, 11.x)	Yes	Yes	Quiz, Import GIFT Format File
Captivate 12.0 to 12.2	No	No	Nothing. Questions are typed by hand
Captivate 12.3 and later	No	Yes	File, Import, Import CSV

The fastest way to tell which you have: open the Quiz menu. If Import GIFT Format File is listed there, you are on Classic. If there is no Quiz menu of that shape and importing sits under File, you are on the rewritten Captivate and GIFT is not available at any version.

Worth knowing that GIFT was never an Adobe format. It came out of Moodle, and Captivate Classic reading it was Adobe supporting somebody else's plain text convention because education had standardized on it. That is also why one GIFT file works in both places, which matters if the same material runs as a Captivate course and a Moodle quiz.

How do you import a GIFT file into Captivate Classic?

1. Save your questions as a .txt file encoded as UTF-8. This matters the moment a question contains a curly quote or an accented name.
2. In Captivate Classic, click Quiz, then Import GIFT Format File.
3. Select the file and click Open.
4. Captivate parses the file and builds the question slides. If it hits a question type it does not support, it shows an error naming the problem instead of importing something broken.
5. Style and reorder the slides as you would any other question slide.

That error message is a genuine advantage. Moodle, importing the same format, will accept a malformed block and silently create a question where every option scores zero. Captivate telling you what it could not parse turns a failed import into a five minute fix rather than something a learner discovers for you.

What does GIFT syntax look like?

A GIFT question is a title in double colons, the question text, then the answers in braces. An equals sign marks a correct answer, a tilde marks a wrong one, and a hash introduces the feedback shown for that choice. A blank line separates questions.

// Escalation policy, module 2
::Q1 Escalation window::
How long do you have to escalate a Sev 1 ticket?
{
=Within 15 minutes #Correct, Sev 1 escalates inside 15 min.
~Within 1 hour #Too slow, that is the Sev 2 window.
~Within 4 hours #That is the Sev 3 window.
~By end of day #Sev 1 never waits for end of day.
}

True or false questions are shorter, and take the answer inline:

::Q2 Approval::
A Sev 1 escalation needs manager sign off first.{FALSE}

Lines starting with two slashes are comments and are ignored. The title between double colons is optional but worth writing, because it is what you will see in the slide list when you are looking for one question among forty.

The escaping rule that breaks hand written GIFT files

Six characters mean something structural in GIFT: the tilde, equals sign, hash, colon, and both brace characters. Backslash escapes any of them. Miss one and the file either fails to parse or, worse, parses into something you did not write.

// A colon in the stem has to be escaped
::Q3 Setting change::
At 12\:04 the presenter changes which setting?
{
=Retry limit
~Session timeout
}

The two that bite in practice are colons in timestamps and equals signs inside answer text. An unescaped equals sign in a wrong answer turns it into a second correct answer, and because the file still parses cleanly nothing warns you. If you are generating the file rather than typing it, check that whatever produced it escapes these for you.

How do you import questions as CSV in the current Captivate?

From version 12.3, use File, Import, Import CSV, or choose Import CSV from the slide navigator under New slide. Adobe ships a sample CSV with the application, and copying its headings is safer than typing them from a guide. You will find it at Gallery/Quiz inside the install folder, which is under Program Files on Windows and inside the application folder on macOS.

Column	What goes in it
Question Type	Multiple choice, True/False, Short answer, Sequence, or Match
Points	The score the question is worth
Question Stem	The question text itself
Answer Options	The choices. A leading asterisk marks a correct one
Slide Type	G for a graded slide, KC for a knowledge check

The asterisk convention only applies to multiple choice and true or false. If a multiple choice question has more than one correct answer, put an asterisk on each of them. Anyone who has built an Articulate Storyline import will recognize the pattern, since Storyline marks correct answers the same way.

The Slide Type column is more useful than it looks. Setting an item to KC makes it a knowledge check rather than a graded question, so you can mix quick comprehension checks and scored items in one import instead of rebuilding half of them afterwards.

Importing into a question pool

A question pool is a named bank that sits outside the slide order, and random question slides draw from it at runtime. Captivate Classic imports a GIFT file straight into a pool rather than into the project, which is the right target whenever the questions belong to a topic you will reuse.

Pools are also where bulk generation earns its keep. A fixed ten question quiz needs ten good items. A pool feeding ten random slides wants forty or fifty so a retake is genuinely different, and forty is exactly the volume nobody wants to write by hand. Draft long, then cut.

What does not survive the import

• Styling. Both routes bring in content, not design. Slides land on your project theme and you restyle once, not per question.
• Explanations, on the CSV route. Captivate CSV has no dedicated explanation column, so per answer reasoning has to go into feedback manually. GIFT carries it natively as answer feedback, which is a real argument for Classic if your questions have explanations worth keeping.
• Media. Neither format carries images or audio into the question. Add those in Captivate afterwards.
• Question types Captivate does not have. Classic imports multiple choice, true or false, short answer and matching from GIFT. Anything else is rejected with an error.

Where the questions come from in the first place

None of this solves the actual bottleneck, which is writing forty questions about a two hour recording. If the source material is a recorded training session, webinar, or screen capture, you can skip the blank page: our Adobe Captivate quiz generator reads the recording and drafts multiple choice questions with the correct answer marked, a one line explanation, and a timestamp back to the moment each question tests. Export GIFT for Classic or CSV for 12.3 and later, and the import above is the last step rather than the start of a long afternoon.

If the same material also has to run somewhere other than Captivate, generate once and export twice. The identical GIFT file loads into a Moodle question bank without a single edit, and Canvas, Blackboard and Brightspace take a QTI package instead. Our worked GIFT walkthrough covers the Moodle side of that in the same detail as this page covers Captivate.

One last thing worth planning for. Captivate publishes the finished course as SCORM, and a score only means anything once it lands somewhere it can be reported on, which in most companies is the learning platform staff actually log into. Decide where completion is recorded before you build the quiz, because it changes whether you need graded slides or knowledge checks, and that is a column in the import file rather than something you can bolt on later.