Not sure if anyone else has experienced this but I'm working on a storyline project and making some amendments, working on my desktop, and every time I preview it reverts the changes I've made. I've got around it by clicking 'save' every time I make a change but obviously that's not ideal! Any ideas what could be causing this? It's a small and simple project.
Hi Jessica. I'm experiencing that issue too! I didn't tie it in with the Preview until you mentioned it.
I would do something, Preview, see that it was functioning and then move on, only to realise a few minutes later what was done hadn't 'stuck'. Previewing is such a pavlovian response I didn't make the connection between the two.
Strange isn't it? It seemed to stop doing it for parts of the afternoon yesterday and then towards end of the day started again! Will have a look now and see what i find!
I don't see that either of you opened up a case for this behavior, but as Leslie mentioned that's the best course of action so that we can get some more detailed information from you!
Hi Ashley. I wish I had the time to open up a case for every single issue I encounter with Storyline but that wouldn't leave me much time to actually get work done, being honest.
Here is a short list of issues that I have encountered within Storyline over the last few weeks. With projects flying at me with the encroaching EOFY I simply have not got time to catalogue each and every issue with a demo file - I sincerely would love to - some of these issues are mind boggling in their randomness, and while some have been seemingly fixed in a recent update other new ones have taken their place:
Trying to copy and paste a text box that is tied to a master slide now causes Storyline to crash.
On some modules I have been tasked with updating, the previously functioning progress buttons which were circle shapes (hidden by the edge of the slide - so only a semi-circle is visible) causes the slide to 'jump' within it's transition to display the full shape (no matter if it's a shape, button of image). Amazingly I did try to figure this one out and it seems to have to have something to do with having an image on the slide and an animated text/shape box overlaid on top. Nonsense, I know... but... see attached file.
Having to input a dimension twice in the Format Box if two items are selected because the value always defaults to 0 on first attempt.
Occasionally I cannot move from one slide to the next. All the slides in a scene get ‘selected’ instead of the desired slide. Switching to Story View doesn’t help either. Reboot of app usually solves it.
Duplicating a master slide sometimes causes storyline to confuse what master is being worked on. I need to quit and open again for amendments to register/display.
Editing a master slide sometimes causes storyline to ‘freeze’ on the master slide just worked on, even if I try to click on any of the others. I need to quit and open again for amendments to register/display.
Changing name of layer. Can’t simply delete the “1” after the name. Have to change to new number or character, press return, then click in again to rename.
Pasting formats using the Format Painter tool causes the “We’re sorry…” Storyline Error Report box to open. Can still continue, but…
Clicking on the “Use Count” value within the variables dialog box causes the “We’re sorry…” Storyline Error Report box to open. Can still continue, but…
Importing videos sometimes causes the “We’re sorry…” Storyline Error Report box to open. Reboot usually solves it.
Changing the colour of a bullet point often changes the indent. Seriously, what is up with that???
Randomly grabbing a guide. This has now been fixed in recent versions by ‘locking’ the guide which is great.
Clicking on a guide and dragging to create a new one causes the interface to zoom in and the cursor to subsequently disappear (Parallels on Mac using an Apple Mouse). Cursor appears outside of storyline environment but cannot be see within Storyline. Only closing and reopening solves issue.
Mouse disappearing within Storyline frame upon some key combination - possibly a Parallels/Windows issue.
Dragging a number of shapes/text boxes into/out of a scroll panel causes a few shapes to mis-align or not drag at all or sit outside.
Upon publishing text disappears from inside a shape box. Looks fine within Storyline. Have to click “Change Shape” options for text to ‘re-appear’ in published output.
Changing the colour of text in either the heading or body text box on the master slide fails to roll out the effect to module slides. This has been an issue since forever but it is amazing it hasn't been fixed by now.
‘Size And Position’ and ‘Format Shape’ dialog boxes disappear every time Preview is triggered. No reason why they can’t stay visible when returning from Preview, or even made as Integrated Panes. Latest version does provide positioning info, but Format info is just as important to access easily. I recognise that this is not necessarily a glitch per se, but it is infuriating to say the least. There must be other folks out there who detest doing the same things over and over again just to access fundamental inputs.
3. In any box that allows typing both a number and numbers smaller than 1. You have to type "0.5" because ".5" is changed to "5"
7. This is true in renaming duplicated items on the timeline; you must first change the name, ("House1") to something else ("HouseA") before you can change it to "House".
8 and 9 I use these frequently without problems, but I completely close and restart SL about once per hour. If I forget, it locks or crashes to remind me :(
Nice one Walt. Your addendum to point 3 is spot on - it's only a niggle but it is an annoying niggle, especially if you want to be precise with regards timings.
Another thing I would like to add to the list:
19. Sometimes, when I attempt to crop an image it merely 'squishes' the image rather than 'chop' it. Randomly. Like, it works fine on every image and then, all of a sudden, it starts squishing them. No idea why.
And the shenanigans that goes on if you try to crop a number of images at the same time - wowzers! - things end up upside down, or stretched to infinity or just completely disappeared. Incredible stuff.
Wow. Just when I thought I had run out of issues...
Twice today I have been working on a slide and all of a sudden the screen "jumps" and I find myself in another part of the module, either a different scene, or on a master slide, and all the edits I have applied over the last 5-10 minutes have disappeared.
This seems to be what Jessica has been experiencing but on steroids.
I am thinking it may be a glitch with the auto-save maybe (???) because I had noticed the weird flicker a few times last week and thought I should change the autosave from 10 mins to 5 because things are getting a little bit flaky and unstable.
Could the auto-save glitch and instead of saving it reverts? Which would be hilarious...
And just to add an extra layer of oddness the vertical distribution is now greyed out as a result of that "screen frazzle re jiggery" which is annoying. I can still access it from the Home > Arrange drop-down panel, but...
20. And I don't want to talk about what happens to objects when a group are selected in order to specify an X distance and equal length - they just all clump up at 0 on the Y axis, whereas before, the values could be keyed in by tabbing from the X to Y to Width then Height - if the input was null the values would be just ignored, instead, now, null is being defined as 0.
Thank you for speaking up and letting us know of the various issues that have been tripping you up and causing you pain. We are sure you are not alone in some of these issues and want you to work as effortlessly as possible.
Before we dig into the details of your post, I’d encourage you to get in contact with our support team any time you have a question or issue where you need help. I know this takes a moment, but you may find it saves you time and effort in the long run by removing obstacles from your path.
That said, our team did look into all of the items that you called out. We were able to replicate some in Parallels but need to cross-test in a native Windows PC to confirm our findings. Please find the response to each, below:
1. Trying to copy and paste a text box that is tied to a master slide now causes Storyline to crash.
This isn't something we've seen before, and we’re having some trouble attempting to reproduce the problem. Is this happening on multiple projects or one in particular? Can you please send us a copy of your .story project file so that we can take a closer look at the problem?
2. Previously functioning progress buttons which were circle shapes cause the slide to 'jump' within its transition to display the full shape.
We were able to replicate this in update 16 and am getting this up to our development team to take a closer look at. In our testing we only saw this behavior when using we used a modified shape such as the Pie, Arc, Block Arc and had it partially off the stage. That said, we are seeing that updating to our newest release has fixed this issue.
3. Having to input a dimension twice in the Format Box if two items are selected because the value always defaults to 0 on first attempt.
Yep! This is happening when tabbing from one cell to another. If we press the enter key first, it does not happen. We will get this to our team to look at further as well.
4. Occasionally cannot move from one slide to the next. All the slides in a scene get ‘selected’ instead of the desired slide.
Odd; we have yet to be able to replicate this. Several issues that you are facing seem to be related. These are things we have yet to replicate. We do not have this logged as a known bug, but as you have stated restarting resolves the issue. We would like to work with you more holistically here to see the size of the files you are working with, what system resources you have available and to ensure you have followed the guidelines for working on a Mac.
5 - 10.
We have not been able to reproduce these. We will need to work with you to get to the bottom of these.
11. Changing the color of a bullet point often changes the indent.
We can reproduce the issue. This is a possible bug.
12. Randomly grabbing a guide. This has now been fixed in recent versions by ‘locking’ the guide which is great.
Unable to reproduce.
13. Clicking on a guide and dragging to create a new one causes the interface to zoom in and the cursor to subsequently disappear.
In working in Parallels with a Magic mouse, we saw this as well. It happens when we slide our finger up or down when dragging the guide. It seems the zoom function is set to activate on a Control + Scroll and is not playing well with Control + Drag for duplicating and moving the guides.
14. Mouse disappearing within Storyline frame upon some key combination.
Unable to reproduce.
15. Dragging a number of shapes/text boxes into/out of a scroll panel causes a few shapes to misalign or not drag at all or sit outside.
Unable to reproduce. Is this reproducible on a specific file or when using a certain font? If a sample file is available, we would love to investigate this further.
16. Upon publishing, text disappears from inside a shape box.
Unable to reproduce. This may be related to number 15; we would love to investigate this further as well.
17. Changing the color of text in either the heading or body text box on the master slide fails to roll out the effect to module slides.
When editing the slide master heading/body, have you tried selecting the text box itself by clicking on it in the timeline panel and then changing the text color? Selecting the text box worked better for us as opposed to highlighting the text in the text box and then changing the color.
18. ‘Size and Position’ and ‘Format Shape’ dialog boxes disappear every time Preview is triggered.
This is working as currently designed. This can be submitted as a Feature Request.
19. Attempt to crop an image 'squishes' the image rather than 'chop' it. Trying to crop a number of images at the same time.
We are unable to reproduce this when cropping one image. Regarding cropping multiple images simultaneously, the crop button is disabled when multiple items are selected. Can you take a Peek of the problem and share it with us? We would like to see how you are selecting multiple items and using the crop function.
20. All images in a group clump up at 0 on the Y-axis.
We are not able to reproduce this if images are set to be a group. If the images are not grouped, then this is reproducible as setting the x/y distances applies to each image, not them as a whole, so all images will be set to that distance from the corner or center (whichever you choose).
In reference to the items that we are not able to reproduce; these would be better addressed in a web conference and screen-share. This will allow us to see the behaviors in your specific environment, and give us a better idea of how to move forward. To this end, we have opened a support case on your behalf and escalated it to our Senior Support Team. They will be contacting you to set up a call for a time that works for you.
Hi folks. Thanks for taking the time out to try and address those issues in turn. I can happily help out from next week onwards with any additional information you might need.
Point 17: Wow. This would really, REALLY need to be addressed if this is the way to roll out universal edits from the master slide. I have tried it 3 times this morning and twice it has worked as you described. EUREKA. But man, why would I do it that way when I can click on the item on the screen stage?
Regarding point 19: I don't use the Crop Icon in the top ribbon at all. I usually have the Size & Position dialogue box open and input any measurements there. You can select any number of items and edit their values in there.
I would love to help clarify a number of other items you mentioned but I am seriously under pressure this week.
Point 19. If you use the size and position settings, when you change one of them, you are squishing the image. Size keeps the whole image, but at a different magnification. Only the crop icon from the top ribbon will allow you to chop off part of the image.
Point 19. If you use the size and position settings, when you change one of them, you are squishing the image. Size keeps the whole image, but at a different magnification. Only the crop icon from the top ribbon will allow you to chop off part of the image.
Did you even look at the image he linked?
There's a whole section for crop. I'm with him on this one — it frequently does not crop the image and treats it like a resize.
Had issues recently with the program quitting out completely and reflowing ALL text. No response from Articulate when completely error panel.
I got into the habit of re-saving every 15 minutes or so, under a different name, so I had a good version to return to with not too many changes. Bit flaky.
Looking forward to getting on a web conference with you when you are able and thanks for the reply.
Point 17: We did some further testing and were able to replicate this a few times and will be working with our team to get this looked into further.
Regarding point 19: This has alluded us thus far. If you or Buel can you take a Peek of the problem that would be helpful. You can include the "Share" link here in your reply, or you can show us this problem during our web conference.
Hi Joshua. Yeah, I have to figure out what time here in Oz coincides with your working hours in the US.
And, just to let you know, I did try to take a "Peek" of the image crop issue this morning but, yeaaaaah, first time using Peek and it crashed, so, uh, do I add that to the list or just leave it for now? :)
I do apologise as well to Jessica and everyone for hijacking the post with this list of issues, but it was to kind of make a point.
However, I do think it is obscuring the most important issue of all, as AWP IT has reminded us, that Storyline 'warp spasms' occasionally and folks lose work that's been done, whether it outright crashes or does that weird 'judder' thingy whereby it seems to reset to a point in the recent past and any work done since that point vanishes. If one notices the 'judder' then maybe one can retrace and redo, but if one doesn't, and continues on then there is a sizable gap in work being lost.
Jessica, Were you able to walk through the steps of this article about unexpected/erratic behavior? How are things going? If you still have issues with this let's get you to open a case so we can troubleshoot further.
Hey everybody. I'm excited to let you know that we just released update 19 for Storyline 360! It includes new features and fixes - check them all out here.
One of the fixes addresses an issue where files were reverting to old content after previewing or when re-opening the file.
Here’s how you can update Storyline 360 to take advantage of everything the latest release has to offer. Let me know how you make out!
25 Replies
Hi Jessica
you might want to try a repair of SL360 or this article about unexpected / erratic behaviour.
You are working from your local drive and not a network, usb or external drive? as that can sometimes cause issues.
Hi Wendy
Yes I'm working on my local drive. I will have a look at the links you've suggested. Thank you for taking the time to help
Jessica
Thanks Matthew.
As I mentioned here, I've seen one case based on the users posting and I've linked it.
If anyone needs to work with our support team, please do so here so we can monitor.
thank you, I'm glad it's not just me going a bit batty!
Hi Jessica. I'm experiencing that issue too! I didn't tie it in with the Preview until you mentioned it.
I would do something, Preview, see that it was functioning and then move on, only to realise a few minutes later what was done hadn't 'stuck'. Previewing is such a pavlovian response I didn't make the connection between the two.
Hi Diarmaid
Strange isn't it? It seemed to stop doing it for parts of the afternoon yesterday and then towards end of the day started again! Will have a look now and see what i find!
Hi Jessica and Diarmaid,
I don't see that either of you opened up a case for this behavior, but as Leslie mentioned that's the best course of action so that we can get some more detailed information from you!
Hi Ashley. I wish I had the time to open up a case for every single issue I encounter with Storyline but that wouldn't leave me much time to actually get work done, being honest.
Here is a short list of issues that I have encountered within Storyline over the last few weeks. With projects flying at me with the encroaching EOFY I simply have not got time to catalogue each and every issue with a demo file - I sincerely would love to - some of these issues are mind boggling in their randomness, and while some have been seemingly fixed in a recent update other new ones have taken their place:
I would add to Diarmaid's list.
3. In any box that allows typing both a number and numbers smaller than 1. You have to type "0.5" because ".5" is changed to "5"
7. This is true in renaming duplicated items on the timeline; you must first change the name, ("House1") to something else ("HouseA") before you can change it to "House".
8 and 9 I use these frequently without problems, but I completely close and restart SL about once per hour. If I forget, it locks or crashes to remind me :(
Nice one Walt. Your addendum to point 3 is spot on - it's only a niggle but it is an annoying niggle, especially if you want to be precise with regards timings.
Another thing I would like to add to the list:
19. Sometimes, when I attempt to crop an image it merely 'squishes' the image rather than 'chop' it. Randomly. Like, it works fine on every image and then, all of a sudden, it starts squishing them. No idea why.
And the shenanigans that goes on if you try to crop a number of images at the same time - wowzers! - things end up upside down, or stretched to infinity or just completely disappeared. Incredible stuff.
Wow. Just when I thought I had run out of issues...
Twice today I have been working on a slide and all of a sudden the screen "jumps" and I find myself in another part of the module, either a different scene, or on a master slide, and all the edits I have applied over the last 5-10 minutes have disappeared.
This seems to be what Jessica has been experiencing but on steroids.
I am thinking it may be a glitch with the auto-save maybe (???) because I had noticed the weird flicker a few times last week and thought I should change the autosave from 10 mins to 5 because things are getting a little bit flaky and unstable.
Could the auto-save glitch and instead of saving it reverts? Which would be hilarious...
And just to add an extra layer of oddness the vertical distribution is now greyed out as a result of that "screen frazzle re jiggery" which is annoying. I can still access it from the Home > Arrange drop-down panel, but...
20. And I don't want to talk about what happens to objects when a group are selected in order to specify an X distance and equal length - they just all clump up at 0 on the Y axis, whereas before, the values could be keyed in by tabbing from the X to Y to Width then Height - if the input was null the values would be just ignored, instead, now, null is being defined as 0.
It's almost like jury-rigging the code of a PowerPoint extension into a standalone program isn't the best way to make something usable.
Hi there Diarmaid,
Thank you for speaking up and letting us know of the various issues that have been tripping you up and causing you pain. We are sure you are not alone in some of these issues and want you to work as effortlessly as possible.
Before we dig into the details of your post, I’d encourage you to get in contact with our support team any time you have a question or issue where you need help. I know this takes a moment, but you may find it saves you time and effort in the long run by removing obstacles from your path.
That said, our team did look into all of the items that you called out. We were able to replicate some in Parallels but need to cross-test in a native Windows PC to confirm our findings. Please find the response to each, below:
1. Trying to copy and paste a text box that is tied to a master slide now causes Storyline to crash.
This isn't something we've seen before, and we’re having some trouble attempting to reproduce the problem. Is this happening on multiple projects or one in particular? Can you please send us a copy of your .story project file so that we can take a closer look at the problem?
2. Previously functioning progress buttons which were circle shapes cause the slide to 'jump' within its transition to display the full shape.
We were able to replicate this in update 16 and am getting this up to our development team to take a closer look at. In our testing we only saw this behavior when using we used a modified shape such as the Pie, Arc, Block Arc and had it partially off the stage. That said, we are seeing that updating to our newest release has fixed this issue.
3. Having to input a dimension twice in the Format Box if two items are selected because the value always defaults to 0 on first attempt.
Yep! This is happening when tabbing from one cell to another. If we press the enter key first, it does not happen. We will get this to our team to look at further as well.
4. Occasionally cannot move from one slide to the next. All the slides in a scene get ‘selected’ instead of the desired slide.
Odd; we have yet to be able to replicate this. Several issues that you are facing seem to be related. These are things we have yet to replicate. We do not have this logged as a known bug, but as you have stated restarting resolves the issue. We would like to work with you more holistically here to see the size of the files you are working with, what system resources you have available and to ensure you have followed the guidelines for working on a Mac.
5 - 10.
We have not been able to reproduce these. We will need to work with you to get to the bottom of these.
11. Changing the color of a bullet point often changes the indent.
We can reproduce the issue. This is a possible bug.
12. Randomly grabbing a guide. This has now been fixed in recent versions by ‘locking’ the guide which is great.
Unable to reproduce.
13. Clicking on a guide and dragging to create a new one causes the interface to zoom in and the cursor to subsequently disappear.
In working in Parallels with a Magic mouse, we saw this as well. It happens when we slide our finger up or down when dragging the guide. It seems the zoom function is set to activate on a Control + Scroll and is not playing well with Control + Drag for duplicating and moving the guides.
14. Mouse disappearing within Storyline frame upon some key combination.
Unable to reproduce.
15. Dragging a number of shapes/text boxes into/out of a scroll panel causes a few shapes to misalign or not drag at all or sit outside.
Unable to reproduce. Is this reproducible on a specific file or when using a certain font? If a sample file is available, we would love to investigate this further.
16. Upon publishing, text disappears from inside a shape box.
Unable to reproduce. This may be related to number 15; we would love to investigate this further as well.
17. Changing the color of text in either the heading or body text box on the master slide fails to roll out the effect to module slides.
When editing the slide master heading/body, have you tried selecting the text box itself by clicking on it in the timeline panel and then changing the text color? Selecting the text box worked better for us as opposed to highlighting the text in the text box and then changing the color.
18. ‘Size and Position’ and ‘Format Shape’ dialog boxes disappear every time Preview is triggered.
This is working as currently designed. This can be submitted as a Feature Request.
19. Attempt to crop an image 'squishes' the image rather than 'chop' it. Trying to crop a number of images at the same time.
We are unable to reproduce this when cropping one image. Regarding cropping multiple images simultaneously, the crop button is disabled when multiple items are selected. Can you take a Peek of the problem and share it with us? We would like to see how you are selecting multiple items and using the crop function.
20. All images in a group clump up at 0 on the Y-axis.
We are not able to reproduce this if images are set to be a group. If the images are not grouped, then this is reproducible as setting the x/y distances applies to each image, not them as a whole, so all images will be set to that distance from the corner or center (whichever you choose).
In reference to the items that we are not able to reproduce; these would be better addressed in a web conference and screen-share. This will allow us to see the behaviors in your specific environment, and give us a better idea of how to move forward. To this end, we have opened a support case on your behalf and escalated it to our Senior Support Team. They will be contacting you to set up a call for a time that works for you.
Looking forward to helping you from there!
Hi folks. Thanks for taking the time out to try and address those issues in turn. I can happily help out from next week onwards with any additional information you might need.
Point 17: Wow. This would really, REALLY need to be addressed if this is the way to roll out universal edits from the master slide. I have tried it 3 times this morning and twice it has worked as you described. EUREKA. But man, why would I do it that way when I can click on the item on the screen stage?
Regarding point 19: I don't use the Crop Icon in the top ribbon at all. I usually have the Size & Position dialogue box open and input any measurements there. You can select any number of items and edit their values in there.
I would love to help clarify a number of other items you mentioned but I am seriously under pressure this week.
Point 19. If you use the size and position settings, when you change one of them, you are squishing the image. Size keeps the whole image, but at a different magnification. Only the crop icon from the top ribbon will allow you to chop off part of the image.
Did you even look at the image he linked?
There's a whole section for crop. I'm with him on this one — it frequently does not crop the image and treats it like a resize.
Had issues recently with the program quitting out completely and reflowing ALL text. No response from Articulate when completely error panel.
I got into the habit of re-saving every 15 minutes or so, under a different name, so I had a good version to return to with not too many changes. Bit flaky.
Hello Diarmaid,
Looking forward to getting on a web conference with you when you are able and thanks for the reply.
Point 17: We did some further testing and were able to replicate this a few times and will be working with our team to get this looked into further.
Regarding point 19: This has alluded us thus far. If you or Buel can you take a Peek of the problem that would be helpful. You can include the "Share" link here in your reply, or you can show us this problem during our web conference.
Hope to hear from you soon
Hi AWP IT,
I'm sorry you ran into this issue with the program quitting and reflowing your text.
As the error reports go to our dev team, I have opened up a support case for you. Expect an email from our team shortly.
Hi Joshua. Yeah, I have to figure out what time here in Oz coincides with your working hours in the US.
And, just to let you know, I did try to take a "Peek" of the image crop issue this morning but, yeaaaaah, first time using Peek and it crashed, so, uh, do I add that to the list or just leave it for now? :)
I do apologise as well to Jessica and everyone for hijacking the post with this list of issues, but it was to kind of make a point.
However, I do think it is obscuring the most important issue of all, as AWP IT has reminded us, that Storyline 'warp spasms' occasionally and folks lose work that's been done, whether it outright crashes or does that weird 'judder' thingy whereby it seems to reset to a point in the recent past and any work done since that point vanishes. If one notices the 'judder' then maybe one can retrace and redo, but if one doesn't, and continues on then there is a sizable gap in work being lost.
Hi Diarmaid,
As Vic said in his email, you can just let us know what time works during your regular work hours and we will work around your schedule.
We will look at the issue with Peek crashing as well. Maybe something more systemic.
Thank you for bringing this back around to Jessica's issue.
Jessica, Were you able to walk through the steps of this article about unexpected/erratic behavior? How are things going? If you still have issues with this let's get you to open a case so we can troubleshoot further.
Hey everybody. I'm excited to let you know that we just released update 19 for Storyline 360! It includes new features and fixes - check them all out here.
One of the fixes addresses an issue where files were reverting to old content after previewing or when re-opening the file.
Here’s how you can update Storyline 360 to take advantage of everything the latest release has to offer. Let me know how you make out!
Hi Everyone,
I just wanted to pop in here and let you know that we fixed the issues where:
Here's how to install the latest Storyline 360 update to see all the recent enhancements and fixes.
If the problem reappears, please record a Peek 360 screencast for me, and I'll be happy to help!
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.