Hangs on Cleaning up Temporary Files

Dec 01, 2016

Any idea why Presenter Studio360, while publishing, hangs when it is cleaning up temporary files?  I had this issue with another course and submitted it to Articulate Support.  This particular project was published earlier without an issue.  Articulate 360 updated and now the project will not publish.

Using Windows 10, PowerPoint 2016, Articulate Studio 360

70 Replies
Lauren Connelly

Hi Michael!

I'm happy to take a look at the file!

I went through the file and found corrupted slides that were interrupting the publish! I'm going to list out those slides here:

Slide 11: Scenario

Slide 21, 31, 40, 52, 64 : Presentation

Slide 72: Friendly Reminder

The commonality between the Presentation and Friendly Reminder slide is the orange shading. Once I removed these slides, the presentation published without an error message or lagging. 

Designs Online

Hello all,

I was happy to see others had had this issue of hangup after "cleaning up temporary files" in Articulate 360 (misery loves company, after all!).  I tried some of the suggestions here with some success, but my issue appears to have a different origin.

Removing the NOTES section alone did not work, though I was willing to do so, as I had CC for the slides.

Then I decided to publish it without the MENU or NOTES - because I was under a deadline - but before doing so, I noticed that the SCORM identifier had spaces in the title. I removed the spaces in the SCORM Identifier (see screenshot below), removed the MENU and NOTES, and published - it worked!

Feeling encouraged, I added the NOTES and MENU back in (by checking the boxes under Player Properties), and, keeping the new no-space-SCORM identifier, it published again without a problem.

Fluke? Perhaps my computer was feeling under the weather? At any rate, it worked.

See screenshot (I removed some identifying information).

Stay well, all.

Katie Riggio

Hi Mohammad,

So sorry to hear you're getting stuck during publish. 

  • Is this happening with any Presenter file?
  • Are you comfortable with sharing your Articulate Package with us for testing? That way, we could try to publish the course and let you know how it goes! If that works, please use this private upload link.
Allen Keele

Hello All,

This post is ancient, but the problem persists to this day with Articulate Studio PResenter 360, as of version 8.26.x. I am happy to report I was able to solve this issue in my particular case.

I have a 140 slide presentation including 10 Quizmaker integrated exams, audio narration, and animated bullets throughout. Recently, one of my stand-by courses that I've successfully published for years suddenly stopped publishing due to freezing at "Cleaning up temporary files."

After doing all of the normal recommended reset and reinstall steps for "unesected and erratic behavior...", and after rebuilding the presentation by re-using slides and re-importing audio, I methodically started tearing the presentation apart to see what caused the conflict. I stripped out all of the animated bullets. Still crashes. I stripped out all of the practice exams. Still crashes. I stripped out all of the audio. Still crashes. I then rebuilt a presentation by copy-pasting content from source slides to new destination slides in a mirror PPTX file. Still crashes.  I then copied the presentation to 10-slide chunks new presentations, and re-published each to find the problematic slide.

I found it! It was a slide with multiple graphic picture elements and graphic PowerPoint shapes. no animation. Just a simple slide with audio narration. I selected all of the objects, and grouped them per PowerPoint. I then saved the object as a picture, built a new slide using the picture instead of the multiple objects. I deleted the slide with multiple graphics and PPTX shapes. IT PUBLISHED!

That's 3 days of my life I will never get back.

Of course, none of this addresses the issues that remain after years of asking - that the player's search function won't work in HTML, or that audio updates, player updates, and publishing configuration updates do not save to the PPT. Old well-documented problems I've learned to work around by building new presentations.

Karen Anderson

I've found a solution that usually works when a course freezes at the "Cleaning up temporary files" step. After closing and re-opening the PowerPoint, I go to the bottom of the thumbnails. There will be one or more thumbnails that duplicate slides in the course. Usually, it is missing text or images, but has enough content to figure out where it is placed in the course. I delete the half empty thumbnail and also delete the slide in the course. I replace the slide with one started from scratch. When I publish the course again, it no longer freezes and completes the publishing process. I completely agree with you on the other lingering problems that have been there for years.

Karen Anderson

Bobby, Slide 33 appears at the bottom of the thumbnails in the PowerPoint file. It is missing text and has a different background. This indicates that there is a problem with slide 30. To correct the problem, create a new slide 30 from scratch and then delete slide 33 and the old slide 30. When I've taken these steps, the course no longer hangs on the Cleaning Up Temporary Files step.

Shalaka Mandlekar

HI Lauren,

There are 3 buttons on the player tab. The sequence should be as follows:

COMO NAVEGAR | AGRADECIMENTOS | SAÍDA

We have arranged the sequence as mentioned above in player settings. However when we publish the Presenter file, the sequence changes as follows:

SAÍDA | COMO NAVEGAR | AGRADECIMENTOS

We tried out on different machines but the issue persist. Kindly advise.

Thanks and regards,
Shalaka

 

Tom Johnson

I am currently having this issue with a major project, and we've been experiencing this problem for years now and it's very frustrating. In almost every case, the PowerPoint files that are exhibiting problems with publishing through Presenter have Smart Art in them. If you're not testing this issue with Smart Art, that may be why you aren't able to replicate the issue. 

Tom Johnson
Shalaka Mandlekar

Hi,

The issue is resolved. We found that those files were added as Engage Interaction instead of adding in the Player Tab section. 

Regards,

Shalaka Mandlekar.

I wasn't talking about your issue, I was talking about the main issue of this thread, "hangs on cleaning up temporary files." I have this issue on almost all PowerPoint files that include a large amount (or sometimes just a small amount) of Smart Art. The common thread for all of the files we work on that fail to publish is Smart Art. If Articulate isn't testing Presenter problems with Smart Art in the PowerPoint, they're probably never going to replicate the problem. 

Ren Gomez

Hi Tom,

To help clarify, it looks like Shalaka was jumping back into this community forum to share the results of what issue they were running into and not directly replying to your message.

Smart Art in a Presenter course should remain and not cause a file to hang during publication. I ran a quick test here and found no issues when publishing to Review 360.

If you're able to, please share your files with our support team to take a closer look and see why this is happening!