The Case of the Disappearing Cursor

Feb 23, 2012

This has been happening to me more and more often lately. I save my presentaion, select "Record Narration" and everything looks fine. The little sand-timer appears as the slide loads to the narration application and then, when the slide notes and narration screen appears, my cursor is gone. I can move the mouse to set the cursor at the bottom of the screen or at the left side, where it is visible but when I try to move it onto the narration area, it seems to slide beneath the area. I have to place it at the bottom of the screen below the text and start rolling upward and clicking so I can see where it marks my spot in the text. I get my bearings and then keep moving the invisible cursor until, hopefully at some point I see the "Save & Close" button illuminate and know I cna click and get off the screen. I made an image to show what I mean.

The yellow arrows indicate the area where I can see the cursor and the red arrows are where it seems to be beneath the images on the screen. It's like they are in the next layer.

I hope this makes the situation clear. Any help is appreciated. I've tried reloading Articulate but will do so again now, since this is happening almost every time I try to narrate a slide. Once I have a successful attempt, I can continue t narrate from slide to slide with no problem, but if I save and close, it will likely disappear again the next time I try.

27 Replies

Sarah Tinson

12 years ago02/23/12 at 11:55 am (UTC)

Hi Jon - interesting. I have exactly the same issue when I go into Synch Animations. No cursor, but as I mouse over parts of the tool bar I can see where it should be as the area highlights. I have to blindly navigate to the Save and Close button to close, then when I re-open it's fine. Now that you've mentioned it, I realise that it's happening more often - I've just ignored it as relaunching the Synch Animation screen fixes it, but I'm curious now as to why it happens.

Sarah.

Dwayne Schamp

12 years ago02/23/12 at 12:18 pm (UTC)

Again, I am one that is not sure why this is happening, but a quick fix we have found is that if you switch programs using Alt+Tab, then switch back to the Articulate program, the cursor reappears.

Sarah Tinson

12 years ago02/23/12 at 12:26 pm (UTC)

Thanks Dwayne - that's certainly faster than closing down and reopening - I'll try it when it happens next.

Jon DeMartino
Author

12 years ago02/23/12 at 1:31 pm (UTC)

I just reinstalled Articulate and it happened again. I tried Dwayne's solution and it worked. I narrated a few slides and saved and closed. I just tried to narrate another slide and it happened again. This time the Alt/Tab fix didn't help.

Maybe the Articulate Gurus have a more permanent fix, but meanwhile I'll keep trying Dwayne's. It worked once, at least.

Thanks.

Peter Anderson
Staff

12 years ago02/23/12 at 2:13 pm (UTC)

Hey guys,

This points (!) more toward a possible system display driver issue. I'd suggest updating the mouse/display drivers on your system and see if you can eliminate the behavior that way. I've also brought this to the attention of our senior support guys and will let you know what I learn. Thanks!

David Burton

12 years ago02/28/12 at 4:54 am (UTC)

Joe,

What happens if you uncheck: Show Annotation Tools when inside the Record Narration Window? I understand you might have to Alt-Tab as suggested above, to get your mouse over the checkbox.

While the Show Annotation Tools is still checked, and the mouse pointer is positioned over the slide area, is an arrow pointer shown or the cross hair (+). When having the Annotation tools enabled, there should be a cross hair (+); if not there still might be an issue with the display drivers and/or default system cursors.

Melanie Sobie

12 years ago02/28/12 at 6:15 am (UTC)

I have that problem when I use a program like Camtasia. It is a CPU-intensive process and a memory hog.

Perhaps your computer is a little starved on memory. You might want to try these tips I learned from the Camtasia support page:

Close any applications you don't need.

Disable or adjust your hardware acceleration. Right click on the desktop and select Properties > Settings > Advanced > Troubleshooting. Set the acceleration slider to None.

After you are done recording, set the slider back to where it was.

Caroline Rogg

12 years ago03/14/12 at 2:52 am (UTC)

Hi,

I have the same issues here, restarting the 'Add Annotation' helped.

Penny Christensen

almost 11 years ago06/03/13 at 11:04 am (UTC)

In my experience, the Narration is good for one slide and then hidden cursor/system freeze. I restarted once and Articulate still worked. When I tried to narrate over another slide again it froze and gave me an error that Articulate had been disabled. I had to uninstall & reinstall to make the error stop.

"Show Annotate" does help me find the cursor, but portions of the screen do not appear as expected. I am sure this will be addressed in the future, just keeping it on the radar for our gurus.

Alicia Breig

almost 11 years ago07/10/13 at 7:09 am (UTC)

I am having the very same exact problem as Jon. It is a problem that reoccurs but does not happen every time I try to use the articulate narration, only sometimes. I wish I knew what was causing it. Jon, could you advise if you have since found a solution?

June Dunlap

over 10 years ago08/20/13 at 6:39 am (UTC)

all,

I am experiencing the same problem, yet non of your solutions are working for me. I am having to close and reopen Articulate, and sometimes having to reboot my computer. This is slowly getting old as I am wasting precious time with this problem. Does anyone have a solution yet?

June

Leslie McKerchie
Staff

over 10 years ago08/20/13 at 7:49 am (UTC)

Hi June! There does not seem to be a 'resolution' to this, nor are there many cases about this. I would advise that you package your course and submit it to us so that our support team can have a look.

Alicia, Welcome to E-Learning Heroes! Not sure how your post got missed, but if you are still having difficulty, please do the same.

Cathy Rodriguez

over 10 years ago01/16/14 at 9:38 am (UTC)

This problem seems to happen only if you move your mouse too soon into the area where the Sync Animations window starts building. If you wait until after the Sync Animations window has completely opened and built, then move the mouse into that area, it seems to work fine. Articulate still has a problem but, after several tests, this would seem to be an effective workaround.

Christine Hendrickson
Staff

over 10 years ago01/16/14 at 12:24 pm (UTC)

Thanks for sharing this suggestion, Cathy!

Tanya Samuels

9 years ago01/26/15 at 10:04 pm (UTC)

I see that a LOT of people had/have this problem. So do I. I had it with Studio '09 and was so frustrated by it (and other glitches) that I just stopped using it altogether. I was hoping the problem would be fixed in '13. It isn't and this is very frustrating. I'm so disappointed that I convinced my manager to purchase the new version only to find the same problems, over 3 years later. I hope that someone has found an acceptable fix or work around for this problem.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
Staff

9 years ago01/27/15 at 5:22 pm (UTC)

Hi Tanya,

This thread seems to date back a bit - and I don't see that the most recent user (June) shared her files as Leslie asked - so if you'd like us to take a look at yours, please feel free to share your Presenter package with our team here.

Michael Kerwin

almost 9 years ago06/24/15 at 3:29 pm (UTC)

Several employees are having the same issue here and it happens on most projects we work with. Does not seem to be a rhyme or reason to it yet. We all downloaded the latest version and re installed just to see if that helped. It didn't. Would be great to hear of a fix to the problem.

Leslie McKerchie
Staff

almost 9 years ago06/24/15 at 4:13 pm (UTC)

Hi Michael! As you can see here, I'm not sure that we have reached anything conclusive. Would you be able to share the details and your course files with our team as shared above?

Sonja Villalobos

over 6 years ago12/01/17 at 5:04 am (UTC)

I've just started using Articulate 360, and am having the same problem -- did a quick search online to see how to fix it, gotta say, the six-year-old dialogue with no fix yet is a bit discouraging. None of the solutions that have been suggested over the years are working for me, including shutting down the program, using ALT + Tab to switch between programs, selecting different pointers... and I know it's not a memory issue, because I have a brand-new computer, purchased especially to run this program.

Alyssa Gomez
Staff

over 6 years ago12/04/17 at 4:53 pm (UTC)

Sorry to hear you're encountering this, as well! We want to try and help you straighten this out. Since you're using Articulate 360, could you record a Peek of the behavior you're seeing?

From there, open a case with our team, and share the link to your screen recording. We'll take a look and suggest next steps!

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
Staff

over 6 years ago12/04/17 at 4:53 pm (UTC)

Hi Performance Team,

I'm sorry this is causing you some headaches! It's sadly one of those issues that our team hasn't been able to replicate and therefore hard to track down. If you'd like to share a bit more about your set up in terms of Windows version, Storyline version/update, and anything else - I'd love to have you work with our Support team to take a better look at what's happening.

Laura Douglas

over 4 years ago10/02/19 at 8:46 pm (UTC)

I am experiencing the disappearing cursor whenever I enter the "view tab" to add some guidelines and my cursor disappeared the only way to get it back is to quit SL all together and reopen. Most recent version of SL360.