Error report everytime I try to Preview a Scene

Nov 12, 2015

I keep getting 'Error report' whenever I try to preview scenes in my course. It says 'if this keeps happening, contact technical support'

What's up with this?

 

7 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Mary,

It's hard to say without knowing a bit more information - but if you're having some general odd behavior I'd begin by looking into the following troubleshooting steps:

Lastly, you are always welcome to share with our Support team here. 

Kendra Kernen

Hi Ashley,

I keep getting the error report when I try to preview or publish one particular project. I tested three other projects and they all preview and publish just fine. I've tried all the points you suggested above to no avail, so it must be something in my project. What can you suggest I try to troubleshoot the problem? I guess I started noticing weird little things a couple of weeks ago, and have worked on it nearly every day since then, so it's just about impossible for me to pinpoint where I might have gone wrong. Thank you for any direction you can give me.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Kendra,

Are you using Storyline 2? If so, you may be able to find an earlier version of it following the steps here:

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.
 
If that doesn't work for you, and you've already tested all the other items mentioned above, it sounds like the file may be corrupt beyond recovery. 
Kendra Kernen

Thanks Ashley. Yes, I'm using SL2. I was unable to find a tmp file of my project; i found only one from December 2015 and that had only two slides in it. Can I send you the project and perhaps have one of your experts look at it? If I can't recover this file, or at least a good part of it, I've lost nine weeks worth of work and will miss the deadline for completion. 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Kendra,

File corruption is unpredictable, and there's no straightforward way to determine what causes it. We're happy to take a look and see if we can identify any of the cause of corruption, but once it's been corrupted and elements have been lost there is no way to revert and find those earlier elements. 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).

If you'd like to share it with our Support engineers you can send it along here. Please include the details of the error report that you received and any other information. 

Consider these preventative measures to protect your project files:
 
1) Save and publish projects on your local hard drive. Working on a network drive or external USB drive can cause erratic behavior due to latency.
 
2) Save incrementally. If your app has an AutoRecovery feature, take advantage of it. If not, save a new version of your project every hour or so with a new file name each time. If a file becomes corrupt, you'll still have a working version available.
 
3) Install Dropbox. Snapshots of changes in your local Dropbox folder are kept for 30 days. If a file is damaged or deleted, you can restore a previous snapshot: https://www.dropbox.com/help/11/en.
 
4) Don't leave the app open and unattended for long periods of time. Some users have reported file corruption after leaving their apps open overnight. It's possible that a malware scan or disk backup could run because the machine is idle, making your app vulnerable to crashing.

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.