Lagging, Freezing and Crashing while Editing Quiz Questions

Mar 28, 2017

David Silverman
By David Silverman

I am having issues with Articulate Storyline 360 when I try to edit quizzes. Right now I am working on a project that has two regular slides, 15 question slides, and one results slide, all contained within a single scene, and I am getting serious slow down and lag while trying to edit quiz questions and navigate between question slides.

When I initially launch Storyline, navigating between slides is relatively fast, and it only takes 1-2 seconds to move from one slide to the next. Over time though, as I make changes to slides, move between Form View and Slide View, and start moving between each slide, I start to get serious lag and slow down. On top of that, the longer that I edit question slides, the worse this gets.

In two particularly egregious instances Storyline froze completely, and I had to force quit through Windows Task Manager to close the program.

Normally I find that Storyline can be a bit slow, but never have I experienced as many issues as I do when editing quiz questions. Today was one of the worst experiences I've had up to this point, but I have also had trouble in the past when editing quiz questions on other larger projects.

Currently I am using a Windows 7 64-bit computer with an Intel Core i5-6300 2.4 GHz CPU, 8 GB ram, and an Intel HD Graphics 520 graphics card.

At the time of the first crash, I had Google Chrome with ~10 tabs and Microsoft Excel open in the background. At the time of the second crash I only had Google Chrome with ~6 tabs open in the background. I do not think either of these caused any issues, but I thought I would mention it just in case.

Is there anything you can suggest to improve Storyline's responsiveness, or to speed up the application as a whole? Would getting more ram potentially solve this issue? Do I need a dedicated graphics card to take full advantage of storyline? Any help you can provide would be appreciated.

4 Replies
Alyssa Gomez
7 years ago03/28/17 at 7:54 pm (UTC)

Hey David, sorry you're running into these issues! Here are a few things I'd like to check right off the bat:

  • Are you on the most recent update of Storyline 360 (Update 4)?
  • Are you working from a network or flash drive? Those types of drives are known to cause headaches, so we recommend working from your local hard drive instead.
  • Have you tried building a new sample file with a few quiz questions--does the same thing happen there, or does this seem to be file-specific?

Let's start there, and we'll keep digging if we need to!

David Silverman
7 years ago03/29/17 at 8:02 pm (UTC)

Thanks for responding Alyssa.

To answer your questions:

  • Apparently I was not up to date with Storyline, but, as I've said, I have experienced similar issues in the past, and I did have the most recent update to Storyline installed on those occasions. Obviously since these specific crashes occurred after the most recent update went live, then that may be the cause, but general slow down while editing quiz questions has been an issue for me for a while.
  • I am not working from a flash drive.
  • I did not try building a new sample file in this case, but the file that I was referring to in my original post, the one that crashed multiple times, was a fairly new file, and I had created it the same day that I had all of the issues. Literally the only things I had done with it were create it, add the design elements such as background images and some basic navigation buttons, adjust the master slides, and import the excel file with the quiz questions. I can try making a second file though if you still think that is worthwhile.

I will try editing the file again now that I've updated storyline, and see if the issues persist.

Thanks, David

Alyssa Gomez
7 years ago03/29/17 at 9:01 pm (UTC)

Thanks for that update, David. If you're still seeing this lag after you update Storyline, I would go ahead and reach out to our Support Engineers. They'll be able to work with you one-on-one to troubleshoot this issue based on your specific set up, and they're available 24/7 to assist. If you do decide to open a case, please be sure to share your case number with me so I can follow along. 

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