Images in Storyline disappear from presentation after publish
Feb 11, 2013
Hello,
I'm having an issue with a presentation in Storyline whereby my images (jpegs & pngs) have disappeared. They appear in the preview pane, but in the slide view, they are missing. If I then preview the project, they don't appear.
The slides these images appear on only have 1 layer. It seems as though the images are there- if you click on the slide, there is an active object outline where they should be. I have tried removing these blank boxes and re-inserting the images using the Insert> Picture function but all that is inserted is an empty object box.
I have also attempted to view the presentation on a colleague's pc with Storyline installed but the same issue has occurred.
I am working with the images locally, When creating, editing, or publishing a Storyline project, from local hard drive (typically your C: drive).
I used images from Insert> Characters > photograph>
I have put in a lot of effort and time in animating the slides and If I have to redo it again I will be behind schedule.
Please find the attached source file for your reference.
140 Replies
Hi Jagan,
I see that your case was escalated to one of our Senior Support engineers who have been intimately involved in this scenario and that Justin shared the following with you, which I wanted to offer here as a reminder for anyone else following along:
Really sorry to hear about your Storyline file. Unfortunately, once a .STORY file becomes unusable, it's no longer recoverable.
When creating, editing, or publishing a Storyline project, we recommend working from your local hard drive (typically your C: drive). Working from a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, such as file corruption, an inability to save changes you've made to your project, and loss of resources. Here's a helpful article for you.
Before you work on rebuilding your project, it may be a good idea to import the slides into a new .story project file in order to remove any remnants of file corruption. Here's how to import slides from one Storyline project into another.
I would also recommend implementing a system for backing up your work. The following article describes two free applications that'll synchronize your local project files with a network drive for backup and sharing purposes.
Lastly, here are a few ideas for preventing this problem in the future:
A. Run a full/complete malware scan on your machine to eliminate the possibility of any malware-related problems.
B. Please run through this Knowledge Base Article in its entirety in order to perform a clean remove and reload of Storyline.
C. If the option exists within your anti-malware tool, I would recommend exempting both (i) the Storyline installation folder and (ii) your project folders from malware scans, in an effort to prevent file locking and other conflicts.
D. Use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files.
Other Preventive Measures Moving Forward:
1. Save incrementally. For example, save every hour without fail, and be sure to save with a new file name each time--possibly named for the date and time of day that the save occurs. Then, if the problem recurs, we will have "before" and "after" versions of the file that will allow us to research the problem further. I would also advise implementing Dropbox, which keeps snapshots of every change in your Dropbox folder over the last 30 days. Then, if the file has been damaged or deleted, you can restore the file to an older version with only a few clicks: https://www.dropbox.com/help/11/en Having multiple versions of the file would also be an excellent way to isolate where in the editing process the file became corrupt, which might lead us to the root cause of the problem.
2. Try to avoid leaving Storyline unused and open for extended periods of time. We have observed that if you leave Storyline open during your lunch break or overnight, and a malware scan or disk backup is kicked off due to the detection of an idle machine, Storyline may be vulnerable to crashing, and your .story project file may be vulnerable to corruption.
Hi Ashley!
I also got this email. Thanks. But it would be great if this issue is fixed at least in the upcoming updates so no more user has to face such frustration.
Regards
Thanks Jagan for letting us know you got the email. Our team continues to investigate this issue, and currently since we're not able to replicate it - it's hard to determine what a fix would be. Please ensure you're following along with those guidelines, and if you or anyone else in this thread can consistently reproduce it, take a screen recording of it happening so that we can share that with our team.
Ashley can you confirm whether this issue continues in Storyline 2? Thanks Adam
Hi Adam,
I have not seen this issue in Storyline 2 with brand new files.
If you have a file in SL1 where the images went missing, and you upgrade that into SL2 - those images will still be missing, as when looking at the SL1 one file the images have completely disappeared.
If you run into an issue with SL2, we'll want to know about it right away so please keep us posted here or send it directly to our support engineers.
Hi Ashley,
Just checking in to see if anyone has reported any Storyline 2 issues regarding the graphics disappearing.
Cheers,
Yenn
Hi Yenn,
I haven't heard this yet from any Storyline 2 users. Are you running into difficulties with this in Storyline 2? If so we'll want to take a look at your .story file. You can share it here or send it privately to our support engineers.
I just experienced this issue with Storyline 2 that has the latest update. It's the first time I've experienced it. It's a relatively new course with just 10 slides, and on the last slide, when I did a preview, all images disappeared. If I create any new slides and import images (PNG), they do not appear, just a an empty placeholder frame. If I format the image to put a frame around it, the center is gray. Images on previous slides are intact, and if I create a new project, the images can be placed in the file without a problem.
I'm in need now of moving the slides to a fresh new course. I will do the incremental saving as suggested by other; although having been a user since the beginning of Storyline, this is the first issue like this that I've experienced.
I will say that I accessed a suspicious web page while programming this course and ran a Norton virus scan with the course open. It seems like others in this thread and another thread commented on virus or computer scans interfering with the images, so perhaps that is the cause of the problem.
Thanks,
Lu
Hi Lu,
I'm sorry to hear that you've run into this issue as well - although I'm glad that you were able to reinsert the images and are going to be able to import the slides into a new project. You'll want to confirm that the project itself and your project files are in line with the guidelines here and if you're unable to recover the file or are still seeing issues with images disappearing we'll want to take a look at the behavior and see your .story file. You can share it here or also feel free to connect with our Support engineers.
Thank you Ashley. I was successful in importing all unaffected slides into a new project and all is working well. I'm pretty certain this was due to the Norton antivirus scan. That might be a good best practice to add as well - not to perform virus scans while having an open Articulate course.
Many thanks!
Thanks for sharing Lu!
I don't think this has anything to do with Norton...I don't have Norton installed and have just experienced the issue using Storyline 2 with the latest update. I have only lost about 2 hours of work this time...but have had this happen a number of times now and it would seem that more serious troubleshooting should be spent to resolve this issue once and for all. I find too that it has more to do with images pasted in from PPT or elsewhere and less to do with images inserted using the inset image button.
Hi Suman,
We have not seen this error or issue with Storyline 2, and this thread dates back to Storyline 1 where a number of users experienced it. If you're seeing it in Storyline 2, we'd like to know the steps you go through to reproduce it, and you mentioned images from Powerpoint being copied in? Does it only occur that way? In general, I'd recommend either importing the slides in as detailed here or looking at inserting the images that are saved to your hard drive. As a rule of thumb, we recommend working on local project files as described here as working off a network drive is known to cause issues with projects.
If you continue to experience the issue, could you connect with our Support engineers here and share the .story file?
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Hi Ashley, thanks for getting back to me!
I can see you have been dealing with this for a couple years now, and despite stating you have not seen this before in Storyline 2 below is a list of users from a recent thread (https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/all-images-disappeared) who have experienced the exact same issue using Storyline 2 (and who you have engaged with).
- Michelle Wescott
- Mandy Noble
- Kim Parker
- Nigel Ribeiro
The difficulty in providing the file is that I have already fixed the issue by re-inserting images back in, but next time it happens I will save a copy and provided a fix has not been found upload them to the newer thread.
Hi Ashley, thanks for getting back to me!
I can see you have been dealing with this for a couple years now, and despite stating you have not seen this before in Storyline 2 below is a list of users from a recent thread (https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/all-images-disappeared) who have experienced the exact same issue using Storyline 2 (and who you have engaged with).
- Michelle Wescott
- Mandy Noble
- Kim Parker
- Nigel Ribeiro
The difficulty in providing the file is that I have already fixed the issue by re-inserting images back in, but next time it happens I will save a copy and provided a fix has not been found upload them to the newer thread.
Hi Suman,
Thanks for sharing that link here, and as I'm sure you can imagine we deal with a number of threads per day, so I apologize if I misspoke about not seeing it, I should clarify that we have seen users that said they saw this, as you've noted here by linking that thread - but that we haven't been able to reproduce it and in those cases mentioned in that thread we either haven't heard back from the users or it was connected to an element of corruption within the .story files.
If the images disappear from a Storyline file, here are the recommendations I'd advise:
Please feel free to let us know if you need anything else and we're happy to help.
Hi Suman
I chimed in on this several months ago with a workaround that's worked for us (we've dealt with this issues on a number of occasions, unfortunately). Here the solution I posted previously...try it, hopefully it will save you some time:
Find the folder(s) where the pictures for your presentation are stored, and copy those pictures into a new folder with a different name. Go to the slides and right-click on the blank images, and select "Change picture"...and choose the correct image from the new folder you created. The picture should now appear - though you may have to adjust size, etc.
Best of luck,
Dave
Thanks Dave for sharing those steps - are you using Storyline 1 or Storyline 2?
We use Storyline 2
Thanks Dave - can you connect with our Support team around this? We've heard limited reports in Storyline 2, vs Storyline 1 where the issue was a bit more prevalent. It was connected to corruption issues, but we'd want to take a deep dive into a Storyline 2 file to see if we're able to recreate and get a bit more information.
Thanks Dave
While that works for all the images I have inserted using the 'insert image' button, it does not work for the images I simply copied in from PPT, which I had to re-insert or save as an image than insert.
Either way this is a work around and the real problem still needs resolving, so next time it happens I will submit the Storyline file through.
Thanks again
Suman
Thanks Ashley
I can confirm I am working from a local folder, have tried copying slides into new Storyline file, and am running the latest version of Storyline.
With regards to insert vs. copy and paste, I predominantly use insert image, having said I have used copy/paste many times as well and have had both methods affected by the dissapearing image problem. In a couple instances I actually had to change the filename of the saved image before inserting back for it to show up.
Regardless, both methods should work right? If it happens more with the copy/pasted method than I suggest encouraging people to use this so that the problem can be recreated and sorted once and for all.
Anyway as noted before, if this happens again I will send through the .story file before fixing.
Thanks
Suman
Thanks Suman for sharing that here and definitely please keep us posted on if you're able to replicate the issue so that we can take a look at a .story file. In regards to the copy/paste behavior, it does work, but it seems to have more instances of carrying over problematic formatting from another file, issues with the file name/path of the file from which you're copying, etc. Using the "insert" option helps bypass the formatting issues and when going to insert is a reminder of the file name and path issues as well.
Hi Ashley
It didn't take long to get another instance of this happening sadly.
The file was created using Storyline 2 (worked on locally) but I cant remember if i inserted the images using insert or if i copied and pasted sorry.
Either way you will see the image that is supposed to appear in the preview (both story view and thumbnail) but not on the actual slide. Issue can be fixed by reinserting the image using change image (Dave's suggestion above) but is a pain every time it happens.
Thanks and looking forward to what you come up with.
Suman
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