Open a PDF from a slide in SL?

Hi Laura! You could take a screenshot of your PDF's first page, then insert it on your slide & size it the way you want. Then add a "Jump to URL/File" trigger on the picture. Since your file is on your hard drive and not online somewhere, when you create your trigger, you'll want to click the little ellipse button to navigate to the PDF you want to use. When you publish, your pdf will become part of your published output. Just make sure that when you test your output, you place it in the location for which you published (for example, if you published for web, make sure to upload the content to a web server and test it from there). Otherwise, your browser's security restrictions might not allow the pdf to open.

Hope that helps!

Jeanette, thanks for your follow-up. I'm having the same issue with trying to launch a PDF from one of my course slides using a button. I tried the trigger solution you outlined. The SL development file and the PDF are both on my desktop. Since SL won't let me see the file in preview, I published for the Web to the default My Articulate Projects folder with typical options. However, when I view the results in IE and click the button on my slide, nothing happens. I tried turning off my pop-up blocker, but still no luck.

I noticed that you mentioned that the PDF will become part of your published output, but you also advised that when you test your output, I should place it in the location for which I published to avoid browser security restrictions. Can you elaborate a bit on that point? Where within the output structure should I copy the PDF (e.g., root folder, story_content folder, external_files folder, etc.)? Do I have to update the filepath so the course can anticipate where to find the file following the publish? If indeed SL makes the selected file part of the published output, the wouldn't it already be in there somewhere?

As an alternative approach, I also inserted said PDF as a resource, which seems to open just fine when I manually click it using the Resources tab. Is there perhaps an easier way just to trigger opening the resource programmatically? I didn't see it, but you guys are the experts.

Thanks for any insight you can offer.

Ditto Greg's message. (Thanks for writing it out, Greg!)

Hi Greg & Laura,

Sure, happy to help! When I mentioned that you need to "place your output in the location for which you published," here's what I meant.

When you publish a course from Storyline, you end up with several files and folders on your hard drive. We call this the "published output" of your course. If your course includes a PDF that  you inserted via the "Jump to URL/File" trigger mentioned above, that PDF will be in there - you don't need to worry about manually putting it there, or monkeying around with file/path locations.

But there's the thing:  If you published for Web, you'll need to place your published output (all of the files/folders that Storyline created when you published) on a web server in order for learners to play the course properly. Once you put the published output on a web server, you just give learners a link to the story.html file, and that will launch the course for them from the web server. 

If you instead try to just play your course locally (from your hard drive), the course will launch but you'll likely run into issues with certain things not working as expected, such as PDFs not opening. This is because your browser's security settings notice that you're trying to play web content from a local source, and the browser interprets this as a security risk. 

If you don't have access to a web server for testing, you could use our free service called Tempshare. It allows you to temporarily host your published content for 10 days. 

Does that help?

Ah, it works! I had to publish for LMS and load the course to the LMS. (Duh.) Thanks.

Oh cool! Glad to hear it! Yah, browsers can be fussy sometimes about viewing content locally if it's meant to be hosted on a web server. In a pinch, if you need to test a published project and for whatever reason you can't upload it to a web server (or in your case your LMS), you could always choose Publish For CD, which prepares the content for local viewing. Then you should be able to launch the course from your hard drive without running into the security issues. Glad to hear you're all set!

I have a button in the course that opens a pdf file.  The course is running on three different LMS systems.  The button opens the pdf file on two of the systems, but not on Sum Total.  Any thoughts on why this happening on this system and how I can fix it?  Thank you!

Hi Diane,

Strange that it's not working when you have the project uploaded to SumTotal. I wonder if there's something with the LMS that's blocking the new window/document. 

You're using the same web browser when you test all three, correct? What happens when you try to launch the PDF in SumTotal? Anything at all, any errors, etc.?

Have you had a chance to contact SumTotal about the issue as well?

Thanks!

Is there a way to link the Resources to text on a layer?

Crystal V.

Hi Crystal,

Absolutely!

Check out the documentation here for instructions to do so.