Copy/Paste Images from one story to another

Aug 31, 2012

Is it just me or has someone else also seen this issue.  When I copy an image from a storyline file and paste it in another story file, all I see is the placeholder for the image.  The image does not appear.  Is this a bug or is there something wrong in my installation of storyline.

- Payal

88 Replies
Walt Hamilton

I find that for me personally, it takes SL WAY too long to open a second file. In less than half the time, I can import an entire second file into a new scene, and every element of it is there to copy and paste. If I try to copy and paste, I have to open the resource file every day, if I import it, I do it once for the entire project. It's pretty quick and functional to copy elements from the resources scene, or move entire slides over. At the end of the project, I can delete it, although I frequently leave it in place for maintenance purposes.

martin beaver

Apologies for my late reply I thought I had done already. 

Thanks Walt, your suggestion has worked fine, it's just a pain that there has to be a workaround for something that is simple functionality across most other programs.

I'd say if something doesn't work correctly it shouldn't be in the released version, that's what we would all do if a course wasn't behaving properly right?  

Leslie, this is consistently reproducible and is exacerbated if copying multiple items, specifically the entire contents of one slide in one project to a blank slide in a separate project. 

If it's relating to corruption of files then there must be some deeper underlying issue as it does seem like this happens a lot.  It happens with all the devs in my company and several of my out of work dev friends who also work with SL. 

Hopefully this is something you can rectify as remembering to import a project for the sake of copying and pasting one image or a layout is very irritating in terms of workflow. 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Martin,

If copying one whole slide to another project, importing it would definitely be my recommendation as that would keep all the items together and set up as you initially designed.  

With the latest version of Storyline 3 or 360, you can copy objects or groups of objects from Storyline and paste them into other applications.

  • Shapes, images, text boxes, or selected multiple objects will now copy, as arranged, to your clipboard with bitmap and png data. The program into which you paste the content will determine if the png or bitmap data is used, and will display as follows:

           ◂bitmap: image will display with a white background
           ◂png: image will display the original shape/group of shapes with no background. 
                     (MS Office will read this data).
  • If you have a single audio or video, you can copy and paste those into applications that support media file paths.
  • Highlighting and copying text within a text box will give you .txt or .rtf format for pasting.

Since you're seeing that copy/paste behavior have unintended consequences between two versions of Storyline, it would be helpful to see the steps you're going through and anything that could be hindering it. Also, since you mentioned corruption I wanted to point out some known causes of corruption here. 

Jake Hurt

Yes it is Storyline 3, not 360.

It's strange because its not consistent, sometimes it will copy images and sometimes not.

For example I've had to save background images out so I can import them into another project, but the top bar which is a group of images and text boxes copied over fine.

I thought it might be if something is grouped it copys better but I tried grouping the background image and it still didn't copy. On another day the background images did copy though, it seems to change daily.

Leslie McKerchie

Hmmm, that certainly sounds frustrating Jake.

I've not run into issues with copy/paste before and the inconsistency you are reporting may be why.

Also curious if you're using keyboard commands or right-click or the ribbon buttons? I'm curious if there is any consistency/pattern that may be happening there.

martin beaver

Hi Ashley, 

The only steps are: 

1. select an image in SL project one 

2. copy it using either right click or Ctrl+c

3. paste it in SL project two using either right click or Ctrl+v

The exhibited behaviour exactly mirrors what you have described above as copying to an application other than SL, IE: blank shape or white box depending on image type. 

As I said above Import works fine but it's far from an ideal solution.  

Leslie McKerchie

Thanks for sharing those steps Martin.

I opened two instances of Storyline 3 and was able to do all of the steps above successfully between two projects. 

I am unable to come up with an empty shape/white box. 

Curious if it's a particular image type? Would you be able to share a sample .story file with an image you're experiencing difficulty with so that I could take a look?

Crystal Horn

Hi there, Jen.  Last year, we made an update to Storyline 360 to allow objects to be copied to your clipboard for pasting into other programs and .story files. 

Tell me a little more about what you're seeing.  Is it just a placeholder for the object?  Is this happening with different types of slide objects and media?

Jen McIntosh

Yeah when copying from another storyline file, it's just a placeholder it seems (empty box). Happens with images or characters, but not text. Yes I'm working locally. And yes importing works, so I had to resort to that to fix everything. Copying and pasting just would have been more convenient since I had both files open.