Publish to word, how to stop main layer printing on other layers?

I have had this happen repeatedly on many different projects. The base layer prints fine but for each layer it prints the layers items over top of the items on the base layer even when the base layer objects are are set to be hidden on that layer. This happens to me all the time to the point that I just don't use the Word publish feature.

I'd be very interested to learn how to avoid it.

Thank you, Ashley. I have submitted the project file and Word output that shows the problem through the link you supplied. Yes, it is all being saved and published to my hard drive, not a network location. 

Thanks Rebecca, and I'll follow along in your case. 

Hi Rebecca,

I see that Cleo was able to replicate this and has reported it to our QA team. In the meantime he offered the following workaround:  As a workaround you can try adding a rectangle with fill (same color as your background) to cover the text showing at the base slide. 

Bringing this one back alive. I was hoping Update 4 would fix this issue but alas, it does not. While the image quality is much improved the overprinting layers is still there. The workaround you mention Ashley may work in some instances but if you have any sort of complexity in your design (even a gradient background) it quickly becomes unworkable.

Is there a fix for this coming because even though the image quality is better, publishing to Word is basically unusable:

Hi Brett! I do not have an update to provide as this issue is still in the hands of our QA Team. I did update them so that they would know that another user is reporting this behavior as well, so thanks for sharing. 

Thanks Leslie. Interesting that you say "another user" implying that it's an isolated issue. It happens all the time to everyone on my team.

Would it help if I opened a support ticket for it?

It would not hurt Brett, I do not see instances tied to this. Thank you.

Hi all,

Brett, I share in your frustration as I too am dealing with this problem. I publish to Word in order to provide a document my clients can provide me feedback on. Some of my slides have complex layers and I need to show the client all the views a learner would experience without the text overlapping.

I will wait with breathless anticipation for any responses you get from Articulate Support on this issue.

In the meantime, here is what I have been doing for a work around...may not work for you, but seems to be the most efficient way to get the result I am looking for. If you have a better one, I would love to hear it.

1. Publish the document in Word
2. Publish the document into an LMS (I use Articulate Online, but have used Scorm Cloud as well)
3. For a layer that has overprint, do a screen capture (using the trusty Snipping Tool that comes with Windows) of the layer to get a clean picture file of it.
4. In the Word document, replace the Picture File of the layer with the screen capture picture file

Happy screen capturing to one and all!

S.

Hi Simon,

Thanks for sharing your workaround here. I checked in on the QA issue associated with this thread, and don't have any further information to share, but will add a note referencing this thread and that you're also experiencing the behavior. 

Just a quick follow up on this issue I am wondering if there has been any resolution to this issue?  We often time use the word version as a facilitator guide that can be used for blended learning. But we have to go in and add the layers as individual screenshots as you just get a jumbled overlaped mess when publishing.

Tana, it's still an issue for me and my team.

Hi Tana and welcome to the Heroes community!

I checked into the issue, and it's still with our QA team. I don't have any further information to share at this point.

I've just installed Update 5 and I still have the problem.  I sure need this to be fixed.  I'm a one person shop and I don't have the time to do the screen shots for all the times I use layers!

Hi Joan and welcome to Heroes,

This issue is still with our QA team, so unfortunately I don't have any further updates to share, but we've shared this thread with them so that they're aware how many users it's impacting. 

Publishing to word worked perfectly in previous versions. Can the code that worked be re-instated?

A good feature is now unusable.

Hi Steve,

I don't have any updates to share at this point, but I've let our QA team know that there are additional users commenting in this thread so that they're aware the amount of users is impacting. 

Have there been any updates on this yet?

Hi Stephanie and welcome to Heroes!

I don't have any updates to share at this time, but we have shared this thread with our QA team so that they're aware how many users are being impacted by it.

I've installed Update 6 - which did not specify that this issue was solved - but on a whim last week I tried printing the Word document - and it works. Each layer gets its own picture.

Now I worry that since the engineers don't know that they fixed it, that they will undo it again - as Steve mentions above.

Hi Alicia and Joan,

Thanks for sharing that here. I see the issue is still with our QA team, but I'm going to update and let them know that you're not experiencing this behavior in Update 6, as it could have been resolved with another fix.

Unfortunately, I am also having this problem with Storyline 2.

Hi Scott and welcome to Heroes!

I do see that this has been reported to our QA team for review in Storyline 2. I'll add this thread to the existing report so that we can provide an update here when available. 

I had said earlier that things looked better with Update 6 of Storyline - but that turned out not to be completely true.  When I check the "hide objects on base layer" of the Slide Layer properties, the layer prints fine.  If I'm using the timeline and hiding individual objects from there, that is when the problem occurs and things get laid over each other on the Word print.