navigation looping problem with branching

Hi Curtis, as you learned the Next and Previous buttons use the slide locations you were last at, not necessarily in the correct course order.  Setting the Next/Previous buttons to specific slides should help, but without seeing the course it is difficult to say how to fix your problem.

Thanks for the help Linda.  Let me ask the basic question: if the Next Previous buttons handle slide "history," what is the best way to make a simple next slide, previous slide sequential navigation?  Allow me to explain my a bit more.  Unfortunately the course file is very large so difficult to share.  The other complication I have is that the course template I'm working with has two sets of Next/Previous buttons: the built in player buttons and custom buttons.  I can turn off the player buttons per slide, but the custom buttons are in the master slides and are set to simple next previous triggers by default.  To handle branching, I've been placing copies of the buttons over the defaults.  

I think the Master Next and Previous buttons are still firing and causing the problem.

I would copy the master in question, and delete the buttons from the copy. Use the copy for slides that will need hard-coded jumps. Continue to place your buttons, but now you can trust your triggers.

Hi Curtis,

I'd agree you'd want to only use one set of buttons - as otherwise they could be in conflict with one another. If you're using the previous button it'll go to the last slide seen similar to a browser back button but you could hard code it to go to a particular slide. The Next button should direct to the next slide in the sequence. 

Thanks everyone for the help! I think I've got this under control.

In Articulate Presenter, I don't remember that the Next/Previous functions
behaved like browser back/forward history buttons. Is that new in
Storyline? Perhaps I overlooked it in the past (always possible!). If it
is new, it would be nice to be able to just turn it on/off, or have an
alternate function we can choose that just goes linearly unless you specify
redirection for branching. It's very time consuming to do what I have to
do now to make this work, which is to direct each slide in these long
branched sequences to the correct slides before and after.

Nope - not new. Here is the same information for Presenter. 

Unfortunately based on the set up you're describing I think you'll have to take that route going now, but you can always share your thoughts on how to change this in the form of a feature request.