Master slides and Titles using variables?
Apr 21, 2020
Hello! I'm hoping someone is willing to help out a storyline newbie. I'm working on creating a template to use for all our companies e-learning going forward. I'm looking to create the color shceme, placeholders for the intro portion, meaning a welcome slide, locking menu, section intros, and then the quiz at the end. We're looking at transferring about 30 courses into storyline from a different e-learning program so I'm trying to create as many time saving things as possible.
In the previous program, we have a "subtitle" box that will automatically populate the title of the section the student is working in. For ease of use, I've been trying to use master slides and some of the built in variables to achieve this effect. I've also been trying to get the slide title to prepopulate. On the master slide level, I've tried inserting a reference to one of the built in slide title variables as a test.
When applying that layout to a slide, there is nothing in the text box. When the variable is applied at the slide level, it does work.
Does anyone have any tips for getting the slide and scene titles to pre-populate using master slides? I would really appreciate the help!
6 Replies
Welcome Breanna!
You came to the right spot for help! Our community is full of instructional designers that build incredible courses full of variables! I'll let them step in to offer specific design tips and tricks.
One of the things I've found is to leave the first Master alone and create a second Master and associated layouts. One of the support engineers showed that to me and it seems to work better. You should be able to insert the slide title by using the built in variables. Make a text box or an object > insert reference (Menu.slideTitle or Project.SlideTitle). The subtitle is done by inserting a text box / object and inserting a project variable %Subtitle%. On the slide you then have to create a trigger to say adjust variable (Subtitle) to XXXXX when timeline starts on this slide.
Thank you so much for the replies!
Good to know that I was on exactly the right track and that it may be the original slide master being slightly buggy! I had also gotten about that far with the subtitle variable, but didn't find it to be quite as time saving as I wanted it to be. Would you suggest using that variable for every slide or just the first slide in each scene?
The slide title variable saves time if your design decisions want you to have the slide title. I wouldn't use the sub-title variable. I would put a text box with the sub-title on the slide, that way you can more easily adjust where it is to look best. Some slide titles may be very long or very short and this could affect the look of the text boxes depending how you have formatted the text box.
Hi so what's the difference between the variable that shows %Menu.SlideTitle% and the one with just "Title" with a little white bg?
I am trying to use this Slide Title Variable as Slide Title built in the Slide Masters. For some reason, it didn't pick it up when I renamed my slides. Any clue? thanks!
Hi Joselina,
Thanks for reaching out with your question. I see that you were able to contact our support team, share a .story file, and are currently working directly with Cleo.
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