Office 2021 and Storyline 360

Apr 14, 2023

Upgraded to Office 2021 yesterday and I can no longer import powerpoint files.  

Failed to import PowerPoint presentation.  The presentation could not be imported.  Find out why here.  

I tried rolling back my version of Storyline to November and a couple in between and still getting that error.  

11 Replies
Luciana Piazza

Hi Dan, and welcome to the E-Learning Heroes Community! So happy you're here! 🥳

Thanks so much for reaching out!  I'm sorry to hear you're having this issue importing PowerPoint Presentations into Storyline 360. 

For our System Requirements, we require Microsoft Office 365 (desktop apps only) or the latest perpetual version of Microsoft PowerPoint (32-bit or 64-bit). Could you please confirm your versioning?

Also, do you happen to have a screenshot of the error message you are seeing? It sounds like you meant to attach something, and I'm not seeing it in your original post. 

I'd like to pass along this article that can help us get to the bottom of this issue:

(Perhaps one of the workarounds  (Password Protection, Double-Checking versioning, Security Permissions, etc.) suggested in this article will be helpful.)

I'm looking forward to hearing from you! 

Dan Lawes
Enid Crystal

I'm getting the same error when trying to import PowerPoint into Storyline. What is the workaround or fix please?

I have installed/uninstalled 2021 and 365 and Storyline multiple times.  Done every test that was proposed.  Finally gave up and went back to 2016 and it works fine now.

Luciana Piazza

Hi Enid, sorry to hear you're running into this issue as well. 

Could you please share what version of Storyline 360 you are working on?

For our System Requirements, we require Microsoft Office 365 (desktop apps only) or the latest perpetual version of Microsoft PowerPoint (32-bit or 64-bit). Could you please confirm your Microsoft versioning as well?

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Luciana Piazza

HI Enid, 

Thanks for sharing that information with us. 

I'd like to share a workaround that helped a customer in a similar situation: 

We could make sure VBA is enabled in the Office 2021/365 installation.

Open PowerPoint, go to FILE > Options

https://share.getcloudapp.com/qGuqBvDq

Then you can go to Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Macro Settings > ensure Trust Access to the VBA project object model is checked > hit OK

You then may need to close & reopen PowerPoint. And then try importing again.

If this doesn't seem to be working, I'd love to have our team take a closer look within a support case.

I hope this helps!