I just checked the player version of a program that I have just put together .
I was shocked to find that the voiceover narration on the 1st 48 slides of a 91slide program has disappeared.
I checked and there was nothing in the Audio Editor for these slides.
I did a back up yesterday.
When I recovered both the pp deck .ppm) and the articulte .ppa file, I discovered that yesterday's version of the ppa is 336m compared to 177m for today's.
Is there anychance that my voice over work is still there?
Deeply disappointed that a simple normal activity such as a save as could lead to the lost of all my audio files. Save as is one of the ways in which to create "alternate versions" of a major program under development.
At a minimum, the Studio application should warn you that this is a consequence of using save as when you go to do it. Anything less is simply not acceptable to folks like me who use your product to "commercial" level work. I don't know why I have not run into it before, but this has completely blow away my trust in commercial strength of your product. Means that I can no longer in good conscience recommend Articulate Studio 09 as industrial strength software for e-learning production to my peers and clients. That's disappointing, because that is what I have been doing for a while.
A quick check via Google indicates that problems like this with audio getting lost have been around since March of last year,. But there has been no "fix" update since that time for the Studio suite. I am sure that I am just joining the chorus of voices that you have heard about this issue. But letting an ambush like this stick around for this period of time says something profound about how you see us in the client community.
Well, no more time for this. I have audio to recreate. I will also have to create a different strategy for backing up versions of what I am working on. I guess that I just copy the whole working folder at the end of each day to a back up drive, naming the folder by date. AND NEVER NEVER AGAIN USE SAVE AS IN A POWER POINT PRESENTATION IN WHICH I HAVE DONE ARTICULATE WORK.
SORRY, but I have to finish by saying SHAME ON ARTICULATE for letting this lurk in the forums instead of addressing it with a fix.
Hi Roelf. Sorry to hear about the difficulty here. Your presentation that you create using Presenter uses a file called a PPTA file that stores all of your audio. If you do a File -> Save as and save your presentation somewhere the PPTA file may not go with it. This could be due to a variety of reasons like the directory path contains too many characters or you are working on a network drive. For best results we recommend working exclusively on your local C: drive like here:
Typically when your PPTA file is disconnected from your PowerPoint file, you simply need to reconnect the two. Here's an article outlining how to do this:
If the steps in the article don't help, feel free to send me an email directly to jwilcox@articulate.com and I will arrange for one of my senior customer support engineers to get on a web conference with you and see what we can do to recover your work for you.
As always, Articulate comes through with with responsive customer service.
I appreciate that.
I have done a lot of checking on my drives but the audio is just not there anymore.
So I will get busy recreating it, thanks for your offer.
I have also spent a little time searching the forum.
Although I found a lot of stuff on audio problems, and suggested fixes, I could not find a clear article which says - SAVE AS leads to losing your audio. If that is indeed the case, I suggest that you post a warning of some kind on the forum. Add a "version backup tactic" like the one that I am going to use (copy over my working folder at the end of each day of major work on an e-learning program to a back up file and naming the back up folder by date."
And just to let you folks know, I will not be removing the end slide on this program which gives credit to Articulate Presenter Studio 09 as the "e-learning" production tool set that I use to build this program.
If you want us to do a quick web conference with you to see if we can locate your audio, we'd be happy to do so. Here's a good tutorial on how to backup your project files.
Let me know if there's anything else we can do to help.
I am FREAKING OUT in Atlanta with same issue. Lost all of my audio files earlier today (this has never happened before!!!), found this post, and followed the instructions to restore my audio... I found the -old.ppta file and it worked exactly as it said it would. Whew. Eight hours later, with literally seconds until I was about to hit "publish" and be completely done with my module it happened again. However this time THERE IS NO -OLD.PPTA file to be found. There seems to be an extra ppta with no "old" extension on it. I'm not touching it for fear I might lose my only straw of hope I'm grasping at that I haven't just lost eight hours worth of audio editing. Justin - can you please contact me to help with this audio issue?
First off, my sympathies for the lost audio frustrations...been there done that more times than I care to admit over the years.
Respecting that Articulate's fine software allows you to record directly to each slide so your presentation flows with each slide in a somewhat 'live' format, I would recommend you consider that - with such a large e-learning presentation, you might want to record your audio on another software, back it up and then import that audio to Articulate.
If you mistakenly hit a wrong button, this extra step will mean you at least have all your original audio.
I hope this helps and I hope you're able to recover all your old work.
I too seem to have lost all audio which occurred as I went to publish for this afternoon's deadline.I have looked at the online help, and found nothing yet that can help.The course is all in 1 folder on my C drive, no -old files, nothing hidden, nothing disabled.Please help!
FYI, I have been using Captivate to edit software recordings, and had a little bump occur when importing a PowerPoint slide to Captivate. Although I was not taking it from the course file, the course file was open in the background.
Is there any way I can I find out if my original audio files are anywhere on my computer?
Welcome to Heroes, Doug, and sorry to hear about the trouble. Can I have you contact our support team? They'll be happy to work with you and do everything possible to recover the audio. Please feel free to come back and leave your case number so I can follow up with it personally. Thanks!
Peter, thanks for the quick response. I went ahead and re-recorded my audio to meet my deadline. But its still a mystery to me where the files went and why. But one thing is for sure, I will always record outside of Articulate and import the files from now on.
Regarding contacting the support team, yes, I tried to use the form you linked to several times yesterday, but received an error message to try later each time. I'll try again today.
Sorry for the trouble, Doug. I've just tested the support link and it seems to be working fine now. If you have issues with it in the future, please don't hesitate to contact me directly and I'll be happy to help out. Thanks!
13 Replies
I got a little bit further
I managed to get the PPTm presentation to open by clicking on the PPA file
however when I open voice editor, the timing for the first 48 slides is there, but there are no audio to edit.
I have the recovery files from my backup.
SO I can go back to starting this all over .
The audio tracks just seem to have disappeared.
Very very frustrating
Oops, that can be very frustrating, Roelf! I had fallen prey many a times.
The biggest thing NOT to do is to Save As a PPT that you have already added audio. When you Save As, the audio content is lost.
Do you have the older version of the PPT? (The one before giving Save As command?) That should contain all the audio files.
Go to Audio Editor, and click on the Articulate icon. You can then export the audio files. This will be a safe back up.
Hope the tip helps. And good luck.
Deeply disappointed that a simple normal activity such as a save as could lead to the lost of all my audio files. Save as is one of the ways in which to create "alternate versions" of a major program under development.
At a minimum, the Studio application should warn you that this is a consequence of using save as when you go to do it. Anything less is simply not acceptable to folks like me who use your product to "commercial" level work. I don't know why I have not run into it before, but this has completely blow away my trust in commercial strength of your product. Means that I can no longer in good conscience recommend Articulate Studio 09 as industrial strength software for e-learning production to my peers and clients. That's disappointing, because that is what I have been doing for a while.
A quick check via Google indicates that problems like this with audio getting lost have been around since March of last year,. But there has been no "fix" update since that time for the Studio suite. I am sure that I am just joining the chorus of voices that you have heard about this issue. But letting an ambush like this stick around for this period of time says something profound about how you see us in the client community.
Well, no more time for this. I have audio to recreate. I will also have to create a different strategy for backing up versions of what I am working on. I guess that I just copy the whole working folder at the end of each day to a back up drive, naming the folder by date. AND NEVER NEVER AGAIN USE SAVE AS IN A POWER POINT PRESENTATION IN WHICH I HAVE DONE ARTICULATE WORK.
SORRY, but I have to finish by saying SHAME ON ARTICULATE for letting this lurk in the forums instead of addressing it with a fix.
Roelf
Hi Roelf. Sorry to hear about the difficulty here. Your presentation that you create using Presenter uses a file called a PPTA file that stores all of your audio. If you do a File -> Save as and save your presentation somewhere the PPTA file may not go with it. This could be due to a variety of reasons like the directory path contains too many characters or you are working on a network drive. For best results we recommend working exclusively on your local C: drive like here:
C:\Users\Justin Wilcox\Documents\My Articulate Projects
Typically when your PPTA file is disconnected from your PowerPoint file, you simply need to reconnect the two. Here's an article outlining how to do this:
http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=643
If the steps in the article don't help, feel free to send me an email directly to jwilcox@articulate.com and I will arrange for one of my senior customer support engineers to get on a web conference with you and see what we can do to recover your work for you.
Hi Justin
As always, Articulate comes through with with responsive customer service.
I appreciate that.
I have done a lot of checking on my drives but the audio is just not there anymore.
So I will get busy recreating it, thanks for your offer.
I have also spent a little time searching the forum.
Although I found a lot of stuff on audio problems, and suggested fixes, I could not find a clear article which says - SAVE AS leads to losing your audio. If that is indeed the case, I suggest that you post a warning of some kind on the forum. Add a "version backup tactic" like the one that I am going to use (copy over my working folder at the end of each day of major work on an e-learning program to a back up file and naming the back up folder by date."
And just to let you folks know, I will not be removing the end slide on this program which gives credit to Articulate Presenter Studio 09 as the "e-learning" production tool set that I use to build this program.
Thanks again for your offer of help.
Roelf
Hi Roelf.
If you want us to do a quick web conference with you to see if we can locate your audio, we'd be happy to do so. Here's a good tutorial on how to backup your project files.
Let me know if there's anything else we can do to help.
I am FREAKING OUT in Atlanta with same issue. Lost all of my audio files earlier today (this has never happened before!!!), found this post, and followed the instructions to restore my audio... I found the -old.ppta file and it worked exactly as it said it would. Whew. Eight hours later, with literally seconds until I was about to hit "publish" and be completely done with my module it happened again. However this time THERE IS NO -OLD.PPTA file to be found. There seems to be an extra ppta with no "old" extension on it. I'm not touching it for fear I might lose my only straw of hope I'm grasping at that I haven't just lost eight hours worth of audio editing. Justin - can you please contact me to help with this audio issue?
Hi Laurie.
I've asked someone to touch base with you today so hopefully we can help you get back on track.
Hi Roelf,
First off, my sympathies for the lost audio frustrations...been there done that more times than I care to admit over the years.
Respecting that Articulate's fine software allows you to record directly to each slide so your presentation flows with each slide in a somewhat 'live' format, I would recommend you consider that - with such a large e-learning presentation, you might want to record your audio on another software, back it up and then import that audio to Articulate.
If you mistakenly hit a wrong button, this extra step will mean you at least have all your original audio.
I hope this helps and I hope you're able to recover all your old work.
I too seem to have lost all audio which occurred as I went to publish for this afternoon's deadline. I have looked at the online help, and found nothing yet that can help. The course is all in 1 folder on my C drive, no -old files, nothing hidden, nothing disabled. Please help!
FYI, I have been using Captivate to edit software recordings, and had a little bump occur when importing a PowerPoint slide to Captivate. Although I was not taking it from the course file, the course file was open in the background.
Is there any way I can I find out if my original audio files are anywhere on my computer?
Doug
Welcome to Heroes, Doug, and sorry to hear about the trouble. Can I have you contact our support team? They'll be happy to work with you and do everything possible to recover the audio. Please feel free to come back and leave your case number so I can follow up with it personally. Thanks!
Peter, thanks for the quick response. I went ahead and re-recorded my audio to meet my deadline. But its still a mystery to me where the files went and why. But one thing is for sure, I will always record outside of Articulate and import the files from now on.
Regarding contacting the support team, yes, I tried to use the form you linked to several times yesterday, but received an error message to try later each time. I'll try again today.
Doug
Sorry for the trouble, Doug. I've just tested the support link and it seems to be working fine now. If you have issues with it in the future, please don't hesitate to contact me directly and I'll be happy to help out. Thanks!
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.