Storyline 360: bug in edit for MCQ answers -- all states don't update
Feb 25, 2021
I've just run into a nasty bug, having updated to latest Storyline 360 after getting nearly a year behind. I now find that when I create a new question bank with MCQ question slides, fill them with content, but then later go back and make an edit -- say add or remove a period from an answer, or change the font color of the answers--this change will take effect for SOME states of the given answer but not others. There is no indication of an issue in the form or slide view for that slide, but it appears when you preview or run the quiz, or inspect the states. I'm typically making these edits in the question slide view, either typing in as one would or sometimes (for font changes) using the format painter. Either way, the change seems to take effect for the default state and sometimes one or two others, but not all of them. This is crazy, and dramatically increases effort for edits since now you have to go state by state. Looking for help.
I am attaching a screen vid showing me adding periods to the MCQ answers on one slide, and you can see that in this case the correct answer blanks out completely in three of its states -- even though nothing in the slide or form view would indicate that it's now missing.
7 Replies
Hi Matthew,
Thank you for reaching out and sharing what you are experiencing when editing your questions. The video was especially helpful.
Unfortunately, I am unable to replicate this behavior. With your permission, I'd like to take a look at your project file to investigate what's happening. You can share it publicly here, or send it to me privately by uploading it here. I'll delete it when I'm done troubleshooting.
Hi Leslie:
Here is a .story I've found especially troublesome. Wasn't able to send it to you directly.
Any edits you make to the Quiz MCQ slide answers -- either formatting, punctuation, whatever, may not 'take' across all states. Give it a try. If you can't reproduce, there is probably something corrupt in my current install.
Hi Matthew!
Thank you for sharing the project! When I first opened the project, I saw the same behavior on slide 1.5 in the Question Slide that you shared in the video. I looked at the states of option C) 40 degrees tilt plus 10 degrees hopper floor. The text was only listed in the selected state, so it wasn't shown in Preview. I copied the text and pasted the text in the Normal state, which fixed the issue.
I've added the updated project to this reply! Let me know if you have any questions.
Lauren:
Thanks. I do think that most of us know how to edit individual states, and that is indeed how I've fixed this issue after the fact, when I've caught it.
The question is why is Storyline doing this? Why would it blank out an entire answer state just because I added a period or made some other trivial change? What I would like you to do, if you wouldn't mind, is this: in the same project, make some trivial edit (in either form or slide view) to a different question slide in that question bank, and see if something similarly wacky occurs. Try changing the font size or color, or just adding a period. Look not just for blanked-out states, but for states where your change simply didn't 'take'.
If you can't reproduce this behavior, with that project, then there is probably something corrupt in my install. If you CAN reproduce it, then you guys need to explore it further. Clearly this isn't designed behavior. Right now it's making edits to question answers massively more difficult than they should be.
Thanks,
Mathew
Hi Matthew!
I found that when I initially opened the project, the text was missing from the normal state. However, after changing the text and downloading the file again, the text wasn't missing. I've changed the font color as well, and it appeared as expected on the slide. It's hard to determine the fix since I'm not seeing that the text is missing in the original file after just downloading the file for the third time.
First, I'd recommend repairing Storyline 360. If that doesn't do the trick, it would be helpful to enlist our Support Engineers to see where the culprit is. You can use this link to connect with a Support Engineer.
Lauren:
Thanks for your work on this. Based on your findings, my own guess is that this is the result of a corrupt Storyline install/update on my local machine -- it didn't show up until after I'd done a major update from 13.x to 14.x (it turns out I'd had auto-updates turned off for a year). None of my Storyline-veteran friends have heard of this behavior, and it would be reported all over the forums if it were widespread. So I think I'll try an uninstall/reinstall and see what happens.
Thanks again for investigating.
Matt