Getting Error When Publishing in Storyline 2

Nov 15, 2017

Paul Schafer
By Paul Schafer

I am getting an "Error Report" when I attempt to either preview (entire project) or publish a Storyline 2 project. When I preview each individual scene, they all work fine, but the project will not publish .

I don't know how to interpret the information in the error report. The only line that makes some sense to me is "Object reference not set to an instance of an object." I have gone back through and checked each scene, slide, layer, trigger, and link, but I can't see anything that might cause it to not publish. I have attached an image of the error report. Can anyone help me figure out why I'm getting this error message? Thank you.

10 Replies
Wendy Farmer
over 6 years ago11/15/17 at 1:37 am (UTC)

Hi Paul

hard to say without seeing the source file - happy to try and publish for you if you want to upload it here. 

Alternatively, I would create a new project file and import the slides in and see if you can publish...if you can great, if not,

there may be a corrupt slide, corrupt object on a slide. Then you would import a few slides at a time and try to publish to isolate the offending object.

 

Paul Schafer
over 6 years ago11/15/17 at 1:53 am (UTC)

Hi Wendy

Thank you for the quick and helpful reply. I will first try the process you suggested to isolate the offending slide or object. Great idea!  If I can't figure it out, I will take you up on your offer to try publishing on your end. If I need to, how would I upload my file to you (it's 365 mb)?

Thanks again.  -Paul

Wendy Farmer
over 6 years ago11/15/17 at 2:03 am (UTC)

Wow Paul, that's a biggie...you may find once you create the new project file and import the slides in the size may reduce considerably - especially if you been using the 'save as' option throughout your project.

Probably via dropbox would be better than trying to post on the forum - let's see how you go with the other options first.

Paul Schafer
over 6 years ago11/15/17 at 5:41 pm (UTC)

Hi Wendy

I wanted to give you an update. Success!!  I followed your process, and I finally found the problem. It was a trigger that jumped to a Question bank that was located in a separate scene. When I placed the Question bank within the same scene in which it was previously referenced, the project published perfectly!  But it was your process of elimination that helped me (by trial and error) identify the offending "object reference".

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help. I was having a mild panic attack when this month's worth of detailed work would not publish. Two lessons learned for me: 1) Use 'Save As' to create frequent project backups during the development process, just in case a corrupted file is introduced at some point, and 2) Publish periodically during the development process to test the mechanics of your work. This step could help prevent spending lots of time developing content that will not work as intended when published.

Thanks again, Wendy!! 

Paul

Stephanie Merkel
over 6 years ago11/17/17 at 1:14 am (UTC)

I am running into a similar issue.  I have a HUGE course with six PDFs that we are linking to throughout the course.  The course was created by an outside vendor so originally, the triggers for the PDFs were set up to link to the files on her PC.  When I published it without updating the links, it published fine but obviously, the links to the PDFS didn't work. 

So I updated the triggers to link to the docs on my local drive and not the course won't publish.  I am working locally, path name is short, no symbols or special characters.

 

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