Formatting Problem Surrounding Referenced Text Variable

Jan 31, 2018

I'm looking for advice to solve a formatting issue I've discovered when a text variable is referenced, then followed by punctuation.  Storyline inserts an unwanted "carriage return" following the referenced text.

I've attached examples in Marker text and Shape text. Also attached is a 3-slide .story illustrating my approach. 

I cannot seem to find a thread on this issue in the Community, though I would guess this is a common user frustration. What am I doing wrong? What do I need to do differently?

11 Replies
Amey Sawant

Hello Brad,

i have published the the course using provided .story file and found that it works perfectly fine at my end. I'm sharing the screenshots with the published build for your reference. 

I have used Storyline 2.11 version for this.

Kindly check and let me know.

Alyssa Gomez

Hi Brad,

I opened your file with Storyline 2 Update 12, published it for Web, and then hosted the output on Tempshare. When I tested the text entry field, the variable reference did not add extra space after the name. You can check out a screen recording of my testing in Chrome here. 

Could you also test this link and let me know if you see the same thing?

Brad Pepin

Lightbulb moment this morning, looking at the screen recording by Alyssa Gomez (and Leslie McKerchie's response as the 3rd person essentially saying "No, this works for me!")

You'll see in my Storyline file that I programmed a trigger that uses an "ENTER" keyboard stroke as a redundant method for activating NEXT (like a computer user might use for submitting a form; I use this trick on my QUIZ slides).  It had not occurred to me that on the Text Entry that the ENTER method was inserting the "return" first, AND executing its secondary function to trigger NEXT. Users who dutifully click NEXT do not cause the formatting issue.  I used the ENTER key in every instance of my testing.

Thanks for helping me see something in my  blind spot!  Looks like my "user centered design" was a little too clever for it's own good.

Brad Pepin

Yes, the culprit was me! (I'm sure in your experience the *Author *is the
culprit in MOST cases!)
The video you made was instrumental in seeing how a user *other than me *was
interacting with the program, and realizing my error. There's a lesson in
this whole experience for me! Thanks, again, for doing that extra step,
Alyssa!

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