Low on Memory?! Cant save!

Oct 16, 2012

Got this message when saving:

The project file could not be saved.

Your system appears to be low on memory. Please close any other programs and try again.

I have 12GB RAM, 3GB used 8GB Free!

What should I do, don't want to redo that whole section again...

My project is 108 slides comprising of lots of quiz questions, 8 sections

121 Replies
Matthew Graham

Viruses and malware can cause this to happen as well.  I hope that's not the case!  Try running Free AVG if the problem persists.

If for some reason you need more open resources after doing what Gerry suggested, you can also ctrl+alt+del, go to the task manager, processes, and see if there's anything else hogging resources that you could shut down to save.

Dan Strong

I had everything shut down, with 8GB ram free.

Managed to get out of it by opening another instance of Storyline and copying everything across. Restarting the original instance they copying everything back, it then managed to save after been restarted. This looks like a bug as I had so much RAM left. 

Is there anywhere I can submit one?

Thanks

Jonathan Bacon

Same situation here. Still a problem. I have 8 GB RAM, shut down everything I could and after 2-3 imports or editing multiple slides or coping/duplicating slides; the problem occurs. I can't tell you how much work I've lost. Now I save every few edits, but THAT is very time consuming on a project with 3-5 or more scenes and 30-50 slides.

I haven't tried opening another instance and copying but suspect that if there's insufficient memory to save, I couldn't open another instance anyway.

Christine Hendrickson

Hi guys,

Since Storyline is a 32 bit application, Windows only allows us to address 2GB of memory. Anytime SL gets close to this limit, we'll display that message. Often times, you can still save after the message appears. If you're not able to do so, or you end up losing your work, it might be best to investigate the issue with our tech team. You can submit a support case here.

Thanks!

Dan Strong

Ok, that would be why! Any tips to keep memory down? Restarting the application it seems to be ok, but then add too many more slides and it happens again and I end up losing my work.

The way around it I have been opening up another Storyline and copy/pasting the slides accros then back again after I have restarted. Obviously this is annoying though! Being 32bit should windows not allow 3.2GB RAM?

Jonathan Bacon

I contacted Tech Support and they offered the following links. One suggests you should only store Storyline files on a local drive (I am and was doing that); see http://www.articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=st1&id=cw6rhkr2xpxr, and the second link suggests reinstalling Storyline; see http://www.articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=st1&id=gdz9t4lj0g7w

I'm in the process of following the steps in the second article.

Jonathan

Jannicke Wilhelmsen

We are experiencing the same trouble here... (W7, 64 bit, 8 GB RAM). When files get big we are having trouble with saving, it says out of memory. Sometimes it helps to shut down other programs, sometimes it helps to save with a new version number, and sometimes nothing works... Kind of frustrating when we are working on large projects... we are splitting the files when working on them, but it is not a good solution, because when we import all the scenes to one file, it will not save the big file...

We are also having troubles with publishing large projects, Storyline just closes the publishing without any error message.

Johnathan Brouwer

http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php

We used this...(not created by our team)...but after we had so many problems and wasted time with the low memory and "cannot save" issue, we researched and tried...after install, problem went away...

AGAIN, not created by us or officially endorsed by our team..."its use at your own risk"

Jonathan Bacon

For what it's worth, running through the steps received from Tech Support yesterday (that is, uninstalling Storyline, clearing the registry and then reinstalling plus uninstalling and reinstalling Flash and checking that Microsoft .Net framework was turned on), did not clear up the problem.

I'll try Johnathan's approach next and hope I have the same luck others have had.

Gabriele Dovis (italgo)

I am also experiencing the same king of issue.

I am working on screen capture course, with about 350 slides, and I see the problem when:

1- adding new content
2- copy and paste audio files between slides

3- copy/duplicate a slide

4- action fine tuning on videos (the operation starts, then it fails to save the new edited video into the slide and program freeze..causing me to force Storyline's closure

I was working with iMac with i5 Win7 64GB 4GB RAM, running windows on Virtualbox

I arrived at the point where I cannot insert a new slide, cus ev'thine I saw an error message.

I tried adding 4GB RAM more.

The problem has been solved for parts 1 and 2. Errors 3 and 4 persists.

I will try Jonathan's suggestion..

I love using Storyline, but that said I'm not so confident with hardware and I cannot give an answer, but I am wondering why a new and important software such as Storyline is, has been built for a limited use with new OS, causing problems to users.

Christine Hendrickson

Good Morning Heinrich,

I've actually spoken to one of our own Super Heroes in QA about this issue. From what I understand, the resolution for this is already in the works. In a future release, or possibly even an update, this problem should be resolved. This is certainly good news for me, and hopefully everyone else following this thread!

Also, while the fix that was posted earlier may resolve the issue for some, it's not a method that's supported by Articulate. I'm certainly happy to hear that it's helping some people experiencing this issue, I just need to remind everyone to take caution and keep in mind that this is a third-party program that was not published by us. 

I'll definitely keep an eye on this topic and update the thread with any information that comes my way.

Thanks, have a great day!

John Pieterse

Hi Christine,

That is promissing news! SL is e beautiful piece of software but there should be 64 bit support. I have been reporting on several occassions about this problem (my system Win7, 64 bit, 16 Gb) and it is good to hear that your team is taking it seriously. I have installed the patch some time ago (an earier message on the forum) and it does not do the trick for me.

Can't wait for the 64 bit update or new release (and willing to pay for it to get rid of this problem as it it costing me money now anyway.)

Take care and regards,

John 

Johnathan Brouwer

Christine, I stated  in my post that the solution was not ours and it is to be used "at your own risk"  

I would ask all on the Articulate team...what else do you expect us users to do?  wait for a release/update?  I'm afraid you would see a lot really peeved customers if that was the case...we know updates are coming but we cannot wait, we have customers waiting on us...

Love Sl, as do others here, we just need it to work...

Dan Strong

This is happening on the majority of my large projects now. I would hope there is an update soon and we don't have to wait for a whole new release.

This is costing us a lot of time, its hard to concentrate on a slide knowing that on completion you may not be able to save... I would prefer this fixed over new features.

Hope this is been considered by the Articulate team.

Peter Anderson

Hi everyone, 

Just wanted to reiterate what Christine shared: This is something our QA and development teams are aware of, and they're working really hard so that Storyline can handle large projects with more ease in the near future. We don't have any insight to timeframes for updates, but you'll want to enable the "Check for updates at startup" feature in Storyline to be notified when new updates get released.

In the meantime, we apologize for the inconvenience this is causing and look forward to sharing the update with you. Thanks for understanding.