Publishing to Word Doc doesn't work in Storyline 360

Aug 15, 2017

I am unable to publish my Storyline 360 presentation to Word. When I select the option in the publish settings, it takes all of 2 seconds and tells me it is done, but when I look at what was published there is nothing in the folder. I am able to publish to LMS and web just fine.

120 Replies
Janne Särkelä

Hi,

I recently encountered the same issue. Publishing had worked flawlessly for years, but for some reason it stopped working yesterday. Whatever I tried the word publishing would be over in a second showing the congratulations window and nothing was published.

I'm using Storyline 360 on Mac (Mojave) via Parallels (Windows 7), and I have Office 365 (Shows as Word 2016). Everything has been OK until yesterday. I have always used my Mac side for storing work.

What I tried:

  • Publish a new clean project from Storyline to Windows desktop as Word
  • Saving the new project to Windows desktop and trying to publish as Word from there
  • Try publishing any project that I had published before successfully, to the default location on Windows or anywhere else
  • Restoring default Word File block settings etc
  • Logging out and in again of my Office account 
  • Restarting Windows, reinstalling Storyline

Nothing worked.

My next step was going to be reinstalling Office. Luckily there was an update available for Office. I had hoped this would be the case, because an update might at least refresh something in the system, while not maybe addressing the issue itself. I updated Office package and voilá, Storyline Word publishing started to work again.

I'm not sure what happened there, but poking the Office package helped me at least.

So, try refreshing the Office package via its update function in the Account settings. 

I'm wondering, if a pending Office update would somehow mess with Storyline publishing? It's a mystery for me why this suddenly occurred for me too, without any apparent reason.

Katie Riggio

Good morning, Alexis!

While I'm glad to hear that unchecking the Show slide notes box fixes the problem, I'd love to help you find a better way!

To set us on the right path, could you confirm:

  • Which version of Microsoft Word and Storyline are you using?
  • Does the publishing process fail with any project file or a certain one?
  • Where is the course stored? If on a network drive, try saving it on a local hard drive
Sade Lancaster

My team has just (during COVID) started having this problem as well! I'm using Storyline 360 v3.45, Word 2016. I'm getting no error messages or failure messages. The publish looks successful, just no word document is created. The course is stored locally. I am able to export to word from other programs, just not Storyline. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling.  Most of the ISDs in my office are having the same issue.

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Sade,

Thanks for reaching out and sharing that you're experiencing a similar issue when publishing to Word.

With your permission, I'd like you to share your project file with our support engineers to investigate what's happening. You can share it privately by uploading it here. It will be deleted when troubleshooting is complete.

Leslie McKerchie

Hello Vlkas,

Thanks for reaching out and sharing that you're experiencing an issue publishing your Storyline 360 project to Word.

Are you getting an error?

With your permission, I'd like to take a look at your project file to investigate what's happening. You can share it publicly here, or send it to me privately by uploading it here. I'll delete it when I'm done troubleshooting.

Brenna Bateman

Hello. 

 

I know this is an old feed, but I am experiencing the same issues as the original post describes! I've been attempting to publish the SL360 to MS Word, and I'm seeing no files after a very abrupt confirmation screen. 

I would try the above steps mentioned, however, the major issue -- I only have MS Word for Mac, and the Mac version of MS Word does not have the ability to adjust "File Block Settings", etc. etc. I am running SL360 from a virtual machine on my Mac > Windows 10 pro. Functionality with SL is just fine, but when I try to save to a local folder/cloud server/cloud drive, I still get nothing. 

I'm really hoping someone has a fix or some suggestions!!! Our company uses strictly Macs, with myself as the only admin on a pseudo-Win VM for just the curriculum development portion of my work? I need the Word functionality as a way to print some slides for some occasional SMEs that will not have access to any Articulate programs.

 

Thanks in advance!

Brenna

Leslie McKerchie

Hello Brenna, and welcome to E-Learning Heroes. 😊

In order to publish to Word using Storyline 360, you will need to have Word installed on your Windows 10 virtual machine.

I do have another suggestion for working with your SMEs. You can publish the content to Review 360 to gather feedback on your course. They do not have to have access to Articulate 360.

Luke Stollings

I just ran into the same problem with Storyline 360. To make matters worse, it actually acted like it had succeeded but there was no word doc generated. Luckily saving to my desktop did the trick, but only after closing all open Word documents.  If I had another Word document open, nothing happened.

Lauren Connelly

Hello Luke!

Sorry, you ran into this issue as well! I appreciate you taking the time to share what worked for you. 

Is this happening with all of your projects or just the specific course you're working on? Also, are you seeing this behavior with the latest version of Storyline 360? We are currently on Storyline 360 (Build 3.52.25156.0).

Linda Appleyard

I've just subscribed to Articulate 360 from Storyline 3 because I thought this would fix my publish to Word issues, but it hasn't. I still can't publish to Word. Nothing happens when I hit publish, it doesn't spit out empty folders or even show a progress bar.

I have Office 365 with Word installed on the machine.

I'm also saving to the desktop.

Can anyone shed any light on this? 

Leslie McKerchie

Hello Linda, and welcome to E-Learning Heroes. 😊

Thank you for reaching out and sharing what you are experiencing when publishing to Word. 

Does your project have Slide Notes? There can be related to File Block settings in Word.

Publishing to Microsoft Word Ends Unexpectedly

If that doesn't fix the issue for you, I'd recommend sharing your project file with our support engineers to investigate what's happening. You can share it privately by uploading it here. It will be deleted when troubleshooting is complete.

Earl Kreuzer

Hi,

MY FIX: Uninstall MS Office 365 64-bit version and install MS Office 365 "32-bit" version.

Check your version of Office... (Not the build No.) -- Open any office product - Go to account - choose ? About. You will see what bit version it is at the top of window and at the end of the build # if it is 32-bit or 64-bit.

I have experienced this same issue, and a problem with NOT importing slides from powerpoint and also Publishing from powerpoint. I uninstalled the 64-bit version (have to do this first). Then installed the 32-bit version of office. I believe the issue is that Articulate 360 is still a 32-bit application and it has issues with the 64-bit version of office.

Good luck and let me know it worked for you :)

Stacy LoSchiavo

Hello, I've tried all of the suggested solutions and none of them worked.  I met with my agency's IT Support and they said that the issue is that when you select the publish to Word option it publishes a .doc document.  Since we moved to Office 365 our IT Security has blocked that file type.  Is is possible to get an option added to create the file as a .docx? Or even an option to publish the file to a PDF would be great.