Images in Storyline disappear from presentation after publish

Had the same problem... I stopped saving on the network drive and started to use my C: Drive... and boom everything works perfect.. Once published ans transfered that folder back on the drive and everything works perfect... But that ''Glitch'' should be fixed in my opinion

Hi Jo,

We recommend working locally for that reason and a number of others associated with corruption. If you need to back up your files to a shared or network drive, that's ok to do - you'll just want to ensure you have saved and closed the file before uploading, and then download to your local drive before opening it to edit. 

I have also had this issue with Storyline 1, and have discovered a workaround. The issue is not reliably replicable, but one thing has been common with every time I've experienced it: objects have been moved either from a shared file to a local file, or from a local file to a shared file. When copying Objects from a local file to a shared file, I often experience them disappearing. I've tried creating new files from which to put the images into the shared file, but that makes no difference. They always keep disappearing once they have started to.

I tried solving this by relocating the storyline file from the shared folder to my desktop, but the issue would keep reoccurring. However, if I move the file to my desktop, save as under a different name, save the file of origin as under a different name as well, then all objects can be copied, pasted, or transferred using whatever means possible without issue. The key is to make sure that any movement of objects goes on only between files that have been saved as something new locally. Objects that go in between local and shared folders, or a local folder and a folder that was recently shared, are prone to disappearing in my experience. 

I hope that helps. 

Thanks for sharing your experience as well Mark. 

Hello, first post here...

It just happened to me this morning, day I'm supposed to deliver this 40 plus slide projects. I'm kind of shocked that something like this could happen with a professional software. I have to re-import every images now, is that it? No fix to this thing?

Thanks!

Hi, Martin -- As you are under a time crunch, I would recommend that you use this form to immediately connect with our Support Engineers for additional investigation and assistance. 

Thanks for your reply. I was lucky enough to be able to get a functioning back-up that is automatically saved here, where i work. So I didn't had to re-import everything! but it's still a major issue when if it happens...

Certainly, Martin, and I am glad to hear that you are back in business! I did want to reiterate these recommendations as well for working locally, and if you experience difficulty in the future, these troubleshooting steps are also a great place to start. 

This still happens in Storyline 2.

Is a fix any nearer?

If not this really isn't good enough.

Replacing an image here or there isn't too bad if working on a project that is a few screens long. However when it comes to delivering a large project to a client only to find images randomly don't appear it is a nightmare. In these cases it reflects badly on us when actually it is a SL2 issue. We can't turn to the client a blame SL2. 

Scouring a project that deals with hundreds of images on different screens and different layers just to make sure all images are ok everytime the project is updated should not be expected/required when delivering a project.

With errors/issues like this is SL2 a viable professional authoring tool?

Perhaps it is time to look elsewhere

Hi Michael,

We haven't heard nearly as many reports of images disappearing in Storyline 2, and those that have been shared have often been tracked down to corruption issues from using the files on a network or shared drive. If you're able to replicate this issue while working locally, and are able to determine any other conditions on how it happens our team is looking for examples to investigate further. I'd want to have you reach out to our Support Engineers here to fully investigate this. 

Hi Ashley,

I'm working in Storyline 1 and the missing images problem has just occurred.  That is, the image appears in Preview but is gone in the Publish.  I've been through this entire thread and there are a host of suggestions.  

Is there any page that consolidates all the tested and proven suggestions for Storyline 1 - i.e. a solutions page similar to https://en-uk.articulate.com/support/storyline/unexpected-or-erratic-behavior-in-articulate-storyline?_ga=1.265538188.2069640585.1400776325 that you provided on page 2 of the thread, but updated as appropriate with later information?

Thanks,

Rick

Hi Rick,

Unfortunately there is not. The issue has been inconsistent and the results of each suggested solution also worked inconsistently for individuals. With that type of set up, it's hard for our team to pin point and narrow down a cause and we don't want to document elements that aren't known to always fix an issue. The general issue is one of file corruption and so ensuring you're saving and working on local project files is our main recommendation and guideline for going forward on new projects. 

Thoughtthat might be the case. In any case, I only had to do step 2. of
the detailed repair instructions but did have to go back to a
pre-corrupted version for the repair/rebuildto work. Lessons learned:
back up often, publish often.Not always practicalso at least I will know
what to do if there is a next time. Thank you.

No problem Rick and please feel free to keep us posted if you need anything else! 

Hi Ashley,

I've just had exactly the same problem with Storyline 2. I have a project made up of individual stories saved in our document control system. When you check these out they are now local files (C://). I am then 'Importing' these into a complete course that comprises 14 modules (or stories) and this is saved locally on my computer. I don't have large file names or special characters. Everything was fine until yesterday until I published the course on our LMS. Now the course has decided to hide my images while still showing their markers on the slide. They are displaying on the layer 'snapshot' but not the slide itself. This along with the multiple crashes when in the slide master view is killing me...

Just an update for anyone who is still reading this thread after 3 years..... I remade one of the affected slides using images I had batch changed in photoshop to *.PNG (from *.JPG) and then re-imported them into my complete course. 

Everything worked well EXCEPT the one file I accidentally imported back in as a JPG. So in my case at least, Storyline 2 CANNOT handle jpg files.....

Hopefully this will help others and also allow you to potentially pinpoint the issue in what is otherwise a really intuitive and easy to use program.

P.S. Thanks to everyone for your community contributions, they have helped tremendously.

Great troubleshooting Mike - thanks for sharing.

Hi Mike,

Thanks for that update and narrowing it down. You mentioned it didn't appear once upload to your LMS - but if you looked at the .story file after that were the images still missing in there too? If so, I'd like to have you share a copy of the .story file and the problematic JPEG image with our Support engineers here. If it only wasn't appearing in the LMS I'd also want to confirm that you were working on viewing the published output in one of the supported environments as described here.  Also, you could look at uploading it to another LMS testing environment such as SCORM Cloud which is an industry standard for LMS testing. 

Let us know how it goes and if you choose to go the case route, please let me know the case number so that I can follow along. 

Hello,

When the course I am working on is published to the LMS, images, shapes and layers (except for text) do not appear.

While I am waiting to hear back from our LMS experts, would anyone know if it could be something wrong on my end?

When testing locally for both LMS and CD publishing, everything looks and functions correctly. The issues arise when testing on our LMS.

Thanks

Hi Joseph! 

I would advise that you take a peek at the SCORM Cloud solution that Ashley shared above. This would be the best way to know if the issue is with the content or within the LMS which sounds just like what you are looking for.

Thanks! It works perfectly in SCORM cloud, so this will help during the troubleshooting process.

Thanks Ashley, sorry I just got back to you on this. I can't upload as it hasn't happened again since I made all graphics .PNGs (so there is nothing remaining of the corrupt versions).

It was in the actual story file where I was getting the 'invisible box' syndrome as mentioned by quite a few folk here. This disappeared when I removed files then replaced them with *.PNG. As a note of reference, this happened to my boss when he was using a demo version of the software locally when publishing to our LMS.

I will keep an eye on it and if I can reproduce it I will open a ticket with your guys and reference the number with yourself. Thanks again.

Thanks for the update Mike.

In my story file the numbers in green cirkels disappear when previewing or publishing the e-learning. The file was created on a local drive, but published on a network drive.

You can see the numbers in slide 4, but when you preview only the green cirkles are visible.... file attached

Can anyone help me with this?