Storyline crashes on preview or publish

Yikes! That's definitely not supposed to happen, so let's see if we can straighten this out. Since you said that this happens only with a certain file, we can assume it's not an issue with your software but rather with the file itself. Would you mind sending your file to our support engineers here so we can test it? 

Alyssa,

What was the solution to this issue? I have the same problem - constant crashes on preview and publish. I read somewhere to try importing the file into a new SL. So, I will give that a try.

Sorry you're also at this roadblock, Monica. Happy to help!

Looking at Steve's case: My teammate, Miker, found a corrupt object on a slide that caused Storyline's crash. Do you experience this problem on a specific slide or with multiple ones?

Let us know how the importing process goes! If you're still stuck, we're ready to help! 

Katie, 

Thanks for the suggestions. I imported the SL file into a new SL file. I have four scenes and less than 20 slides. I was able to preview the first scene. Upon attempting to preview the second scene, SL crashed. I'm going to attempt to preview each slide in that scene, to determine if I can isolate the problematic slide. Hopefully, it won't be too painstaking and I can recreate the slide that is "giving me the blues" :-). Thanks again!

Thanks for the update, Monica!

It sounds like there's a corrupt object in the second scene. You can identify it by deleting objects one by one until you find the culprit.

It can be a laborious process – especially when there are a lot of slides – so don't hesitate to reach out to us for help! With your permission, we'll help you troubleshoot your .story file and will delete it once we nail down that culprit. 

Katie,
Yes, that is what I did. The problem was a table on a slide in the second scene. So, I deleted and recreated. It wasn't too painful to locate. I just needed to know where to start to locate the issue. The first approach was to try to preview each scene. If the scene did not preview, then I knew the problem was in a particular scene. Thankfully, it was only one slide and one object.

Thanks again!

Excellent detective work, Monica! 👏

If we can be of any other help, please don't hesitate to reach out!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<ErrorReport xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<UserId>auth0|5c7f96bdc5df09359d5eaac2</UserId>
<HardwareId>WF38U-AUGQJ-TJ667-139RP-3TVVU</HardwareId>
<Message>Specified argument was out of the range of valid values.
Parameter name: direction</Message>
<StackTrace> at PointF s.e(IAnimatable A_0, Direction A_1, bool A_2, int A_3)
at bwVarPoint s.g(IAnimatable A_0, Direction A_1, bool A_2, int A_3)
at bwVarPoint af.e(IAnimatable A_0)
at bwPositionSegment af.g(IAnimatable A_0)
at bwPositionSegment af.h(IAnimatable A_0, Direction A_1)
at bwTweenPosition af.u(IAnimatable A_0)
at bwAnimation af.s(IAnimatable A_0)
at void u.Animate(IAnimatable animatable)
at string Articulate.Design.Animations.ShapeAnimations.a(bwStageObject A_0, string A_1, Nullable&lt;TimeSpan&gt; A_2)
at void Articulate.Design.Shape.ai(bwStageObject A_0)
at void Articulate.Design.Shape.Articulate.Player.IPlayerShape.AddAnimations(IPlayerService service, bwStageObject stageObj)
at void Articulate.Player.PlayerContentPublisher.a(IEnumerable&lt;IPlayerShape&gt; A_0, bwSlideBase A_1)
at bwSlide Articulate.Player.PlayerContentPublisher.CreateSlideObject(IPlayerSlide slide, bwISlideContainer sceneobj)
at void Articulate.Player.PlayerContentPublisher.CreateBridgewaterSlide(PlayerWriterSettings settings, IPlayerSlide slide, bwISlideContainer sceneobj)
at bool Articulate.Player.PlayerContentPublisher.CreateContentScenes(PlayerWriterSettings settings, IPlayerContentProvider contentProvider)
at bwContent Articulate.Player.PlayerWriter.WriteContent(IPlayerContentProvider contentProvider)
at bool Articulate.Player.PlayerWriter.Write(IPlayerContentProvider contentProvider)
at void nr.n()
at void Articulate.Design.Publish.TargetContext+PublishBackgroundWorker.OnDoWork(DoWorkEventArgs e)
at void Articulate.ComponentModel.STABackgroundWorker.a(object A_0)</StackTrace>
</ErrorReport>

Even after importing to different SL files, this still comes up. This seems like a commonly occuring problem.

Hey Brian,

I am sorry that you are hitting this snag!

Does this issue seem to happen with one specific course? If so,  with your permission, I'd like to take a look at your project file to investigate what's happening. You can share it publicly here, or share it privately with our Support Engineers here. Either way, we'll let you know our findings and will delete it after having a closer look!

Hi there! I don't mean to revive an old thread, but I'm running into a very similar issue here with a project that I've imported from PowerPoint.

The peculiar thing is that I don't get a crash report at all - the program simply vanishes/closes out when I try to preview a slide.

Hello Chris, and welcome to E-Learning Heroes! ⭐️

Sorry to hear you're hitting this snag, and I"m happy you reached out! It sounds like this is happening with one specific project? If so, I'd recommend sharing your file with one of our support engineers to help troubleshoot. Feel free to reach out here, and someone from my team will be happy to help get to the bottom of this!

I had this same thing happen and to make an extremely long story short, I was able to narrow it down to bullets. I found after removing a certain bullet type and doing another, it completely resolved this issue. 

Just thought I'd share in case someone needed something else to try!

Hi Casey!

I appreciate you taking the time to return with this workaround! It will be helpful for others who come across a similar issue.

Sorry to dig up this case again - but just wanted to share with all the other e-learning heroes of my experience with an error when trying to publish my .story file. I've been on Google for the last 2 hours trying to figure out what went wrong on my own as the Live Chat feature is only available Mon - Fri and I wasn't able to create a support ticket because there was an error trying to upload the .story file. 

- So I came across multiple threads with people facing the same issue, so I did try various methods from saving the file locally to renaming the files etc.

- I opened a new Storyline file, and imported scene by scene and tried to click on Publish until I was able encounter the same error.

- What i did next was to import the scene slide by slide until I hit the same error message again and relooked at what was wrong with the slide.

- I found out that a navigation button was the one causing the issue. I deleted it, created it again and was able to publish the file with no issues.

Although it is a tedious process especially if you are working with hundreds of slides, this is the only troubleshooting method that works for me - especially on a weekend.

Hope this helps someone out there who is facing the same issue too. 

Hi, I am having the crashing issue to on preview and publishing, can someone help, happy to share the file. 

if the error message appears - please click on the blue text button "information", then a second window will open with useful informations

Just copy the text from the second window and post it here.

• Can you preview individual scenes (if applicable)?
• Can you preview each slide in the scene identified?
• When you identify specific slides, hide objects until you can locate the culprit.

I narrowed it down to which slide it was, and saw it had several layers and it would take a while to go through each object.

I changed all fonts to Arial using Find and Replace Fonts, and it worked. Hope that helps someone! 

(I'm not sure which font was the problem font but I replaced: Calibri, Open Sans, Roboto, Roboto Slab, Segoe UI, Tahoma, Wingdings. I kept Arial and Arial Black as the only two remaining fonts).

Thanks so much for sharing what worked for you, David! I'm sure others in the thread will appreciate this as they come across this thread.

If you have any other discoveries or questions, feel free to reach out in the E-Learning Heroes Community! 

Have a great start to your week! 

I wish I could narrow down which font is causing this.

I'm pretty sure it was Segoe UI which I think was fixed in the October 2022 update:

October 6, 2022 (Build 3.68.28887.0)

• Fixed: Segoe UI fonts could cause Storyline 360 to crash when previewing or publishing.

Hello Stephanie, 

Sorry to hear that you ran into this behavior. 

There's actually a chance that any publishing or previewing issues that you're experiencing might not be related to fonts at all! Would you be willing to share a copy of your project file here or in private by opening a support case so we can take a closer look at what's happening with your file? We'll delete it when we're done testing!