Changing numbering in story view

Mar 27, 2015

Hello,

Is it possible to change the numbering of the slides in Articulate Storyline 1? We've moved around the content and the numbering of the slides now doesn't match the content.

Eg 4.2 in story view refers to Module 1.2 in terms of content.

Thank you very much for your help

Nicola

45 Replies
Christine Kent

It is the developers who need to keep the sequence of slides properly organised -for their own benefit. Consider that I have initially created three scenes, but decide I want to subdivide each of these scenes further. The automatic number in story view will be incorrect. For example, I have scenes 1, 2 and 3, and now want to break up 1 further. That means I want the new subsection of scene 1 to be scene 2, and each of the other scenes renumbered accordingly. Can I do this?

Christine Kent

OK, read all that but it doesn’t seem to answer my question.

This is a known problem that appears (or did appear) regularly on your site. My question really is “has it been fixed in Storyline 2?”

When I create a “Scene” it is numbered automatically. The first “Scene” is numbered 1.
That number does not appear in the “Rename” field. I can change the text and add my own number but I cannot get rid of number 1.
Then I create new frames, and they also take a default number in sequence from number 1 onwards.
They then display in STORY VIEW in reverse sequence to the sequence created (ie from right to left rather than left to right). This is an annoyance. I want them to display from left to right.
But then, as my course evolves, I decide I want to insert additional “Scenes” or break down an existing “Scene” into several “Scenes”.
If I have four scenes already and decide to break up scene 2, my new scene will be numbered scene 5 rather than scene 3 and there appears to be no way I can renumber the scenes once they are created.
Then these scenes display in the originally created order in the player. They can be manually moved each time you publish but this is not acceptable in the long term. The menu needs to be in the correct sequence when generated

Do I have to create a new project, create all the scenes from the outset in the correct sequence, then move all the relevant slides into the new scenes, or is there a simple way of either killing the default number or re-numbering it?

NOTE: that linking the scenes correctly when the student works through the materials does not change the default numbering that appears both in STORY VIEW and The Player.

Cheers, Christine Kent

Christine Kent

Instructional Designer

Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance (ANZIIF)
ANZIIF Membership: Insure your career
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Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia

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Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Christine, 

First, when you reply via email it includes your signature here as a part of the reply. You're welcome to edit the post to remove that information if you wish. 

You can kill the default numbering the the player fairly easily as described here: 

 

And since story view is just for the authors, than it'll only impact the player menu and how users see/interact with it. While in Story view you can delete scenes or slides, and the elements should be renumbered (for example on a project I had opened, I deleted scene 4, and scene 5 was renumbered to scene 4).  In terms of how they'll display, they're appearing in an order based on your triggers and such - so if you modify those, that will update the order as well, although not the number. This video, although about Storyline 1, provides a good explanation of how story view and scene numbering works. 

Hope that helps clarify some elements. 

Andrew Hoskins

Maybe I am reading the response incorrectly, but I don't think the question was answered.  Is there a way to renumber the auto generated numbers on slides, short of deleting them?  Renaming does not help because it doesn't change the auto assigned number.  I can move things around in the menu, but once again, that doesn't change the number that is scene in the story view.  At the moment, the only work-around I have found is to basically create a brand new file and copy and paste the slide over in reverse order.  This, is time consuming and annoying.

Andrew Hoskins

Hello Ashley,

Thank you for the response, but it does not answer my question.  My question regarding the ability to change numbers, is specific ONLY to STORY VIEW.  While I do appreciate the functionality that allows edits to the menu, that is unfortunately, of no value to the Story View numbering.  Deleting the numbers doesn't appear to be an option in Story View.  

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Andrew,

There isn't an option to change how they appear in story view, and that view is only for authors as well. It's not something your learners will see. If you're concerned about what learners see - that'll be in the menu and on the slide titles if displayed.

We would love to hear more about how this would help with your authoring and design in Storyline if you're up for logging a feature request.

Andrew Hoskins

I will most certainly log the request and thanks again for the response. 

Yes - I am aware the learners don't see the numbering - the menu option is nice but not pertinent to this issue.   (FYI - I hope none of this comes across as 'snarky', not intended that way.)

The concern is the method that the slides are numbered in the view that only the author can see.  Because we do not have the ability to renumber or hide those numbers, we really need to build the files in the perfect order the first time if we want the numbers to feel logical.  In the current set up, if we make changes as authors and are relying on the numbering to help us keep larger files organized, it can become very confusing. 

As in the example image I provided on an earlier post.  The item numbered 1.23 should be the first item and the item labeled 1.3 should be the last.  Because I cannot change them, I have to make an extra effort to remember this and any other like situations.  Hopefully that better explains the issue.

Alyssa Gomez

Hi Andrew! I completely understand where you're coming from, and I can see how the current setup makes it difficult to go back and make changes to the slide order once the slides have been developed. I'll be sure to pass along all of the insight you shared to my team. Also, I do see the feature request you submitted--thank you for taking the time to send that to us!

Joel Baughn

Hi Articulate Staff,

I wanted to jump in here as I was looking for the ability to reorganize the specific scene numbers as well because this impacts how handouts publish (when selecting to publish to a Word document.) I have a selection of scenes that were reordered in the menu and I would like to have my handouts reflect the new organization of the menu items (scenes). Unfortunately I have to manually move every element within the word document to meet this reorganization. Reorganizing the Menu order in the player did not affect Publish > Word

This might be helpful to add as evidence to the Feature Request Andrew (above) submitted. 

Michael Marks

Here at the DoD we would like to have this request in the SL3 update as soon as possible.  I'm copying and pasting slides, importing some, adding some here and there -  as ALL OF US DO...you know the drill, and when I export the word doc, I'm handing editors scrambled eggs even tho I go into the player and move the slide around in order.  When this gets into 100s of slides, it's a big PITA to edit in sequential order in word.  For "development team review" this should be a no brainer to be able to do, but nope, nada.  Just looked at the Build 3.6.18134.0 (which we'll DL)  nothing is in this build for these known issues/requests.   

Jeroen ten Have

Hi all

I would like to add to this discussion that there is an option where the end-user will see the numbers for sure.

We are investigating he option to switch on the Menu-functionality so that the end-user has kind of an index available to browse through the content by this structure too (and also can see which pages have been visited in this Index). Since we cannot change the numbers, the index will be built up incorrectly because the building-sequence during design is not the final order in which we would like to present the content.

If someone has an additional remark on this, please let me know. All above mentioned options did not result in changed scene-numbers (as it is possible with individual slides within a scene).

Best Regards
Jeroen

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Jeroen,

Are you able to share a copy of your .story file here with folks in the community? Based on what you're describing I'd be curious to see how the menu option to Reset from story (described here as to how it'll apply the changes) would work for your content. 

If you need to share privately, please feel free to send along to our Support Team.

Jeroen ten Have

The following movie, under the link below, was pretty helpful (even though I use Storyline 3).

https://articulate.com/support/article/customizing-the-course-menu-sl2

I also figured out that the automatic numbering (which is autogenerated based upon the order in which you design your slides) is not used in the build-up of the menu. Within the Player Properties-Menu-tab you can change the names of the slides (as well as it can be changed on the label of the slides themselves). Just adding the preffered numbers to the slide-titles is kind of a work-around but does the job as well.

@Ashley; so thanks for the offer to review my training, but I guess the problem is solved and it is "case closed" from my side.

Kelly Sheehan

I would also ask that the automatic numbering be editable within the story view and the slide views.

I am building a lesson that will not use the Storyline Player at all, just the buttons on the slide for navigation. Trying to figure out where to point the buttons too when the numbering of slides is so out of what because I have moved things around (which as said always happens!) is a real PITA!

PLEASE get this changed asap! All you would have to have is the number being editable when you rename the slide.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Kelly,

This discussion is a bit older, but it would help to know what version of Storyline you're using. Within Storyline 360, if I move the slides around in the story view or the scene panel, the numbers are updating automatically:

And, within the menu itself I can see the numbers while I'm editing but the player only shows the slide title unless I choose to number them automatically (which will be based on the order they're displayed in the menu: 

Those titles and numbers continued to match what I saw in the slide triggers panel as well. 

Kelly Sheehan

Hi Ashley,

We are using Storyline 3 as we can't use Cloud software here.

So while I can do what you have shown in your first graphic, the slide renaming when moved about it all goes out the window when I have used branching and also added slides after the structure was complete.

The picture below is a screenshot from a lesson I am working on at the moment:

Now I would expect it to actually be that the 4 branches start at 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 & 1.7 and then progressing down each branch you would have 1.4.1, 1.4.2 and 1.5.1, 1.5.2 etc. But the numbering is all over the place and when I add a new slide mid branch say it comes in at like 1.8 or something. As I said not sensible and very confusing when trying to link the slide together with buttons. For this lesson I can not use the player, but understand you can use this to rearange things for the end user. But something needs to be done for the Author!

Lauren Connelly

Hi Kelly!

Thanks for including that image. Have you looked into the automatic numbering settings?

To automatically number scenes and slides in your menu (as they appear in Story View), do this:

  1. Click the Additional Options button (the gear icon) below the menu.
  2. Mark the box to Number entries in the menu automatically.
  3. Click OK.

Keep us posted!

Eydie  Castro

Totally agree.  I am currently experiencing the issues described above by you and the previous entries.  The Story View for the developer gets complicated more and more with the system-generated errors, regardless of the triggers, and programming for proper course mapping.  It seems to get worse as the project gets arms and legs.