No publishing option; content acting unusually

Jan 13, 2014

Hollifer Fogarty
By Hollifer Fogarty

Hallo there,

I'm fairly new to Articulate as I've just started using it for a new job.

I'm working in between a couple of computers in this office that have articulate installed, but something has gone seriously awry.

On the first computer I was using Powerpoint '10 and Articulate '09 to create a presentation with a template that had already been built for it (I work at a college, so the template included the logo and a simple background as well as a couple of icons). I ran into problems with the template displaying properly - when previewing and publishing the icons wouldn't show up, headings wouldn't show up, and even when put in manually they just weren't displaying at all. Some of the elements that were displaying were all over the screen in positions I didn't place them, coming in at random timings.

So I moved it over to another computer which I believe is running Powerpoint '13 and Articulate '09, but when I went to publish the file the publish button did nothing. I updated the file so it would be a Powerpoint '13 file and still nothing. I've even tried to publish new test files with and without the template or any other information but the publish button just won't work. Powerpoint '13 has since started to crash after about 5 minutes of it being open, or if you try to record audio, or stops being responsive after importing a video.

I'm new to this system and these computers but the other people in the office are as flummoxed as I am as they haven't ever run into this issue, and It's looking a lot like beginners un-luck right now!

As I absolutely need to get this presentation done I've moved it now into Storyline, but it's a bit frustrating as there's a lot of messing about I have to do to get even my text animations to work in the right order again and I really would have preferred to sync some audio in presenter.

I don't know what to do, and would greatly appreciate any/all help!

Thank you!

4 Replies
Christine Hendrickson
over 10 years ago01/13/14 at 8:48 am (UTC)

Hi there Hollifer and welcome to E-Learning Heroes!

Sorry to hear about the trouble!

First, please try the troubleshooting steps outlined in the following article:

The Articulate Tab on the PowerPoint Ribbon Is Missing

(This should also resolve an unresponsive Articulate Ribbon)

Also, please make sure that you're working with local project files:

  • Work on your local drive (your C: drive). Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, including file corruption, loss of audio, and other unexpected behavior. 
  • You should also make sure the directory path to your project files and your published output is less than 260 characters (for example C:\Articulate).
  • Avoid using special characters, accents or symbols in your file names (this includes spaces and underscores).

Additional information regarding "Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces" in Windows operating systems can be found in the following Microsoft article.

If that doesn't fix the problem, please try repairing Studio '13:

Articulate Support - How to Repair Articulate Studio '13

If you're still experiencing these issues, please try the following troubleshooting steps:

Unexpected or Erratic Behavior in Articulate Studio

Let me know if you try all of those suggestions and still have trouble.

Thanks!

Hollifer Fogarty
over 10 years ago01/14/14 at 8:09 am (UTC)

Hallo Christine,

Thanks for those links! I tried the troubleshooting on the ribbon issue and to my surprise articulate wasn't enabled in some way - however, even enabling it didn't seem to help for some reason.

I think the file could have gotten corrupted after moving it from the desktop to xythos, from powerpoint '10 to '13 and then back and forth - but then I would expect that the other people in the office would have run into this problem but sure, that's only a guess on why it might have started acting erratically.

I have used fullstops in my file names(though I've noticed all of the folders are saved like this), could that be an issue?

(example unit1.1.pptx)

I'll try and get the IT department to reload and reinstall articulate and powerpoint '13 this week and then I'll let you know if that solves it!

Christine Hendrickson
over 10 years ago01/15/14 at 8:44 am (UTC)

Hi there Hollifer,

I apologize for the delay!

Thank you for getting back to me with that information. 

Also, yes - if there's anything in the file name/path other than alphanumerical characters, I would try removing it. 

If the reinstallation doesn't help, I agree - it may be a corruption issue. However, you mentioned others were working on this as well. If they send you a copy as a Presenter Package, I wonder if that would allow you to work with that version of the project files. 

I hope it goes well! 

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