Hi, Sanket -- Thanks so much for your question! It looks like a similar question was posed over here in this discussion, and as this functionality is not currently available, please take a look at the alternatives shared. You are also welcome to submit a feature request via this form with our Product Development team, as well.
yes you can, but it needs a bit tweaking, I explain how:
You must know that each .story file is a sort of big zip archive, so you can access several resource inside it, by renaming from .story to .zip.
So the first step is renaming the source glossary ,story file to .zip, Extract the content into a folder, enter the subfolder "story" and open the file named "playerProps.xml" that contains all player properties, included the glossary therms and definitions. All the data you need is inside the <glossary> node (and subnodes). What you need to do is to copy all the tag and content
<glossary> ..... </glossary>
from the source playerProps.xml file to the destination (inside the course you need to import the glossary).
so you need to rename the destination .story file to .zip, extract the content, open the "story/playerProps.xml" file inside the archive, paste the <glossary> node from the source file, save it, recreate the archive, rename it to .story.
You may find difficult to identify the <glossary> node since the file xml is "minified" (no word-wrapped to save space), you cand search the file for the <glossary> and </glossary> string to identify the node to copy (it is near the end of the xml), in editors that support tag recognition (i.e. Dreamweaver) you can easily select all the tag from the opening to closing declaration, or as an alternative you can de-minify the xml for better viewing (there are several online copy/paste tool to do that) and then minify again the xml file.
this is a bit tricky, but it can save you lot of time, expecially if source and destination .story use very different themes/templates, or if you need to move the glossary quickly from existing courses, or also if you need to translate glossary in other languages.
I have a 110-term glossary that needs to be duplicated in 8 additional Storyline projects, so I was very interested in your clever XML workaround. However, try as I might, I cannot get the glossary to show up in my test .story file. Can you help me? Here's what I did:
1. Rename the project (with the glossary terms) from .story to .zip 2. Open the archive and locate story/playerProps.xml then open in Dreamweaver 3. I am given the choice of viewing or editing, I choose viewing 4. Copy <glossary> to </glossary> to notepad; name file glossary_xml.txt (word wrap turned off) 5. Rename target project (the one needing glossary terms) from .story to .zip 6. Extract zip file 7. Locate story/playerProps.xml and open in Dreamweaver (this time, maybe because the file has been uncompressed, I don't get the choice to view or edit) 8. Replace <glossary> to </glossary> with contents of glossary_xml.txt then save 9. Re-zip the file structure and rename with .story extension 10. Open the new .story project, and open Player Properties/Glossary
The message says "Click here to start adding glossary terms to your player frame." BUMMER!
Hey Bruce - hopefully Zio is still subscribed here, but if you do not hear back soon, you are welcome to reach out to the user directly via the 'Contact Me' option on the user profile.
I just used this method and did basically the same steps as you and it worked. The only differences: Step 2 I unzipped instead of opening the zip, step 4 I did not copy to a text file, just pasted directly into the other playerProps.xml.
Problem solved! Thank you, Philip, for suggesting that I load both playerProps.xml files in DW. (To clarify, I meant to say I unzipped the original project, not opened). Loading both xml files gave me a chance to compare the two line by line and hopefully spot any anomalies. Lo and behold, I found that one particular glossary definition that was displayed in black not green like the others. Upon closer examination, I found it was because of too many double quotation marks ("). In the original glossary, this particular term uses quotations within the definition, but they are slanted quotes, that is, the begin quote is slanted leftward and the end quote is slanted rightward (slanted quotes might be the same thing as smart quotes, not sure). When I copied <glossary> to </glossary> from the source playerProps.xml file to the target version, DW turned the slanted quotes to straight quotes, which XML interpreted as statements. All I did was replace these extra double quotes (") with single quotes (')... since wasn't sure how to insert slanted quotes... saved playerProps.xml, re-zipped the archive, renamed to .story, and the glossary was there. Needless to say, I'm a very happy camper.
Thanks in advance, Leslie, for escalating "glossary import/export" as a feature request :)
Hello again, sorry I haven't read your post earlier.
I didn't have problem with quotation marks in DW, probably since I'm using the latest version, I think you can anyway manage in the preference the way DW rewrites code/entities/special characters.
Thanks for this incredibly useful hack, Zio! I'm just adding a lengthy glossary to four modules. Naturally this was one of the last parts of the project to be signed off by the client, so there was no opportunity to embed it in a common template at the outset. You've saved me a lot of typing - thank you!
Has anyone confirmed this glossary work around works in 360? I understand the steps and am trying this for 360. After rezipping and renaming as .story, the file reports as corrupt when trying to open in 360. Anyone else face this issue and have a solution?
With so many eLearning courses being being developed as mini-modules, having the Glossary tied to the Player's xml makes sense. At least create an app that will allow you to export/import a CSV file into the glossary. The Glossary should be exportable and importable.
Go into file explorer. There are a lot of ways to do this, but pressing win + e will work.
Navigate to the location of the current project. If you don't know where that is, open it in SL, and start to do a Save As ... That will open a window, and you can read the location at the top of it.
Backup your project. Completing the Save As action is one way to create a backup.
Back in File Explorer, look for Nameof YourProject.story. If you don't see the .story part, you will need to change the View setting to show extensions. The View setting is located in different locations for different versions of Windows, so if you can't find it, search for it in your favorite search engine.
Once you can see the .story part of the file name, right click the name of the file and choose Rename. Change the "story" to "zip", but don't change the "." or any other part of the name. You will get a message asking if you are sure. Answer yes, and you are on your way.
Note that SL can't find or open that project until you change the "zip" back to "story".
Thanks for reaching out to let us know that this is a feature that you would like to see as well.
I wanted to share some information about how we manage these feature requests as that may be helpful. We are tracking this one and this conversation is attached for any updates we have to share in the future.
Today we released an exciting new feature for Storyline 360: glossary import and export! You'll find this feature in Storyline 360, build 3.30.19518.0. You can see more details on how to use it in this post.
To install, launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button for Storyline. Details here.
29 Replies
Hi, Sanket -- Thanks so much for your question! It looks like a similar question was posed over here in this discussion, and as this functionality is not currently available, please take a look at the alternatives shared. You are also welcome to submit a feature request via this form with our Product Development team, as well.
Thanks Verymuch for the reply. Looks this feature is must.
yes you can, but it needs a bit tweaking, I explain how:
You must know that each .story file is a sort of big zip archive, so you can access several resource inside it, by renaming from .story to .zip.
So the first step is renaming the source glossary ,story file to .zip,
Extract the content into a folder, enter the subfolder "story" and open the file named "playerProps.xml" that contains all player properties, included the glossary therms and definitions. All the data you need is inside the <glossary> node (and subnodes).
What you need to do is to copy all the tag and content
<glossary> ..... </glossary>
from the source playerProps.xml file to the destination (inside the course you need to import the glossary).
so you need to rename the destination .story file to .zip, extract the content, open the "story/playerProps.xml" file inside the archive, paste the <glossary> node from the source file, save it, recreate the archive, rename it to .story.
You may find difficult to identify the <glossary> node since the file xml is "minified" (no word-wrapped to save space), you cand search the file for the <glossary> and </glossary> string to identify the node to copy (it is near the end of the xml), in editors that support tag recognition (i.e. Dreamweaver) you can easily select all the tag from the opening to closing declaration, or as an alternative you can de-minify the xml for better viewing (there are several online copy/paste tool to do that) and then minify again the xml file.
this is a bit tricky, but it can save you lot of time, expecially if source and destination .story use very different themes/templates, or if you need to move the glossary quickly from existing courses, or also if you need to translate glossary in other languages.
Thanks for popping in to share a solution Zio :)
Zio,
I have a 110-term glossary that needs to be duplicated in 8 additional Storyline projects, so I was very interested in your clever XML workaround. However, try as I might, I cannot get the glossary to show up in my test .story file. Can you help me? Here's what I did:
1. Rename the project (with the glossary terms) from .story to .zip
2. Open the archive and locate story/playerProps.xml then open in Dreamweaver
3. I am given the choice of viewing or editing, I choose viewing
4. Copy <glossary> to </glossary> to notepad; name file glossary_xml.txt (word wrap turned off)
5. Rename target project (the one needing glossary terms) from .story to .zip
6. Extract zip file
7. Locate story/playerProps.xml and open in Dreamweaver (this time, maybe because the file has been uncompressed, I don't get the choice to view or edit)
8. Replace <glossary> to </glossary> with contents of glossary_xml.txt then save
9. Re-zip the file structure and rename with .story extension
10. Open the new .story project, and open Player Properties/Glossary
The message says "Click here to start adding glossary terms to your player frame." BUMMER!
Where did I go wrong?
Hey Bruce - hopefully Zio is still subscribed here, but if you do not hear back soon, you are welcome to reach out to the user directly via the 'Contact Me' option on the user profile.
Hi Bruce,
I just used this method and did basically the same steps as you and it worked. The only differences: Step 2 I unzipped instead of opening the zip, step 4 I did not copy to a text file, just pasted directly into the other playerProps.xml.
Perhaps just try again with those variations?
Thanks Zio for the solution!
Thanks for popping in to share Philip! That's certainly helpful :)
Problem solved! Thank you, Philip, for suggesting that I load both playerProps.xml files in DW. (To clarify, I meant to say I unzipped the original project, not opened). Loading both xml files gave me a chance to compare the two line by line and hopefully spot any anomalies. Lo and behold, I found that one particular glossary definition that was displayed in black not green like the others. Upon closer examination, I found it was because of too many double quotation marks ("). In the original glossary, this particular term uses quotations within the definition, but they are slanted quotes, that is, the begin quote is slanted leftward and the end quote is slanted rightward (slanted quotes might be the same thing as smart quotes, not sure). When I copied <glossary> to </glossary> from the source playerProps.xml file to the target version, DW turned the slanted quotes to straight quotes, which XML interpreted as statements. All I did was replace these extra double quotes (") with single quotes (')... since wasn't sure how to insert slanted quotes... saved playerProps.xml, re-zipped the archive, renamed to .story, and the glossary was there. Needless to say, I'm a very happy camper.
Thanks in advance, Leslie, for escalating "glossary import/export" as a feature request :)
Hello again, sorry I haven't read your post earlier.
I didn't have problem with quotation marks in DW, probably since I'm using the latest version, I think you can anyway manage in the preference the way DW rewrites code/entities/special characters.
Thanks for this incredibly useful hack, Zio! I'm just adding a lengthy glossary to four modules. Naturally this was one of the last parts of the project to be signed off by the client, so there was no opportunity to embed it in a common template at the outset. You've saved me a lot of typing - thank you!
Has anyone confirmed this glossary work around works in 360? I understand the steps and am trying this for 360. After rezipping and renaming as .story, the file reports as corrupt when trying to open in 360. Anyone else face this issue and have a solution?
Hello Leisa,
Hopefully Zio is still subscribed here and can pop in and help you out with this workaround he shared.
We advise setting up a template when you need to use your glossary in other projects as you can read about here.
With so many eLearning courses being being developed as mini-modules, having the Glossary tied to the Player's xml makes sense. At least create an app that will allow you to export/import a CSV file into the glossary. The Glossary should be exportable and importable.
Thanks Emerson for that idea, we'll keep you posted if this makes our product roadmap.
What is the trick to the first step?
You must know that each .story file is a sort of big zip archive, so you can access several resource inside it, by renaming from .story to .zip.
Go into file explorer. There are a lot of ways to do this, but pressing win + e will work.
Navigate to the location of the current project. If you don't know where that is, open it in SL, and start to do a Save As ... That will open a window, and you can read the location at the top of it.
Backup your project. Completing the Save As action is one way to create a backup.
Back in File Explorer, look for Nameof YourProject.story. If you don't see the .story part, you will need to change the View setting to show extensions. The View setting is located in different locations for different versions of Windows, so if you can't find it, search for it in your favorite search engine.
Once you can see the .story part of the file name, right click the name of the file and choose Rename. Change the "story" to "zip", but don't change the "." or any other part of the name. You will get a message asking if you are sure. Answer yes, and you are on your way.
Note that SL can't find or open that project until you change the "zip" back to "story".
Thanks Walt!! Worked great! btw, kudo's to Zio for figuring this out!!! HUGE time-saver!
Thanks, Zio !! Worked great! HUGE time-saver!
Hello,
How did you rezip the whole thing again once the changes have been made? I am stuck here.
Thank you for the attention.
In Windows 7 or higher, select all the files and right click. Zipping is one option, probably under the Send to option.
Can this be added as a product feature rather than having to do all this work?
Hi Anne,
Thanks for reaching out to let us know that this is a feature that you would like to see as well.
I wanted to share some information about how we manage these feature requests as that may be helpful. We are tracking this one and this conversation is attached for any updates we have to share in the future.
I have tried these steps with 360 but it's not working!
Hi all,
Today we released an exciting new feature for Storyline 360: glossary import and export! You'll find this feature in Storyline 360, build 3.30.19518.0. You can see more details on how to use it in this post.
To install, launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button for Storyline. Details here.
Please let us know if you have any questions, either here or by reaching out to our Support Engineers directly.