Preview errors

Have you ever run into the issue of a file that refuses to preview a slide, or anything, correctly? That throws an error when you try?

I am aware of Javascript not being able to be viewed in a preview, but has Storyline thrown an error on a page when you preview it, or try to publish it? If so, what have you done to reverse this?

I was working with a file this morning that was corrupt, but I didn't realize it right away. After spending time trying to re-write the errant slide in various ways, I noticed that I couldn't view the Master slides or the Feedback slides! Luckily, my instructional designer had another version of the file that was not corrupt, and I went to work on that when she told me where it was.

I went to work on the good file, but I started to see there might be issues with it as well. When I started to add layers, I started to get the preview error again.  This slide in question had 12-14 layers to begin with. I ended up simplifying the structure so that there were 8 layers, because I saw a simpler way of coding what I wanted to achieve; much of the layer structure was redundant code. When I did simplify, then try to add another layer, I started to get the error again(!?) so I deleted that new layer, and the slide previewed correctly without issues.

I was getting a sneaking suspicion that there might be an upper limit to how many layers (not slides), total, you can have in a file. Or perhaps slides or layers can cross-link in some fashion...?

I also tried to look for other reasons why this error might have occurred:

• There was audio on each layer. I checked to make sure each was 44.1k 192mbps mps. And all checked out correctly.
• I checked to see if the layers had unique names, and were not “reserve” names – although I don’t think I have ever seen that problem in Storyline, nor have I read anything pertaining to that possible issue.
• I also looked to see if perhaps my Storyline preferences might have been corrupted in some way. I guess I was thinking about how you could run into issues with older Flash APIs, and resetting preferences was a solution.

Can anyone shine a light on this issue? So far I have not had to rebuild a course, but I have seen this issue arise in other files.

I am using Storyline version 2. We never imported Powerpoint, or built the original in SL1 - we just built the course entirely in SL2 from the git-go.

Thanks!