Articulate Storyline 360 - Red X on timeline with error report

I was able to solve this issue by getting an older version out of my backup, copying the slide in the module and deleting the corrupted slide. Any ideas what may have caused this and how to prevent it in the future in case I only have 1 version of the file?

I've read of many others ending up with corrupted files, although I've never had one myself, even when working from a network drive (which is not recommended by support). I wonder if support has ever pinned down a common issue with people that experience this. Computer speed, anti-virus, memory? I guess the only thing we can do is to make sure we back up regularly. I also have a habit of saving many different revisions (filenames) of projects anyway, as UNDO doesn't always work as it should. I will generally save a new filename every day or any time I make a major change to a project, which ever comes first.

Hi Tyler,

I'm so sorry you ran into a corrupt file! Not a fun part of the day.

Common causes are environmental (disk errors, power outages, improper shutdowns), viruses, failed Windows updates, and even file size (i.e., very large files have a higher risk of corrupting). There are some know causes of file corruption such as working off a network/shared drive, the file name, or if files you're inserting are already corrupted. Take a look at some of our best practices  here. 

Also, you can often find a copy in the temp folders too. You may want to bookmark these steps: 

1) Open this folder in Windows Explorer: %appdata%\Articulate\Storyline

2) Scan the contents of this folder for a file that starts with the name of your project. If you find one, copy it to your desktop. If you find more than one, copy the latest version to your desktop.

3) Change the file extension of the copy on your desktop from *.tmp to *.story.

4) Double-click the file to open it in Storyline.

Let us know if you need anything else!