Back button set to Previous slide only works once with branching

May 27, 2020

I am using a custom back button in a branched project. The back button is programmed to go to previous slide so it remembers choices they made and which branch they are on and revisits that slide. 

However, if the learner wants to go back twice then it won't keep reversing through the previous branches. Because it's remembering the previously visited slide, it ends up going forward on the second back selection. For example:

  • 1.1
  • 1.2
  • 1.3
  • 1.4 <back
  • 1.3 <back
  • 1.4 (this is where it should have went to 1.2)

I tried setting a true or false trigger on decisions and then saying if x decison is true, jump to this slide and if Y decison is true, jump to that slide.  But then the buttons didn't work at all. I'm not able to share the project unfortunately.
Is there a discussion or video about this already? I couldn't seem to find one. 

3 Replies
Sam Hill

Hi Lesa, this catches a lot of people out (me included). The Previous Slide trigger is a bit misleading as it does not work in the same way as Next Slide. Previous Slide works in the same way as the Browser Back Button and is based on the history of the order you viewed the slides in. I think this could be where the confusion is? In order to fix this up, you just need to set the Back button trigger to the Slide you want to navigate to.

If I'm on the wrong track, are you able to provide a stripped down example removing any sensitive information.

Lesa  Black

Right. The Previous Slide works great when they just go back once. However when they want to go back two or more slides they can't.

I cant tell the back button to jump to a specific slide because it's a branched scenario so it depends on previous decisions made as to what was the previous slide. 

I put a true or false variable on each branched decision hot spot in the project and programmed a trigger on the custom back buttons that said if hotspot X is set to true jump to slide 1.4 or if hotspot Y is true jump to 1.5 and so on but I'm doing something wrong because that's not jumping anywhere now.

I'm just wondering if theres a thread or video that shows how to customize back buttons in a branched scenario? 

Thanks for any help

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