Rearranging slides
Apr 27, 2023
Hi -- on a course I took recently it shows how you can move a slide and when the blue arrow shows up you can drop the slide there.
This never ever works for me and I cannot figure out why and I just spent an hour trying to get the order back after creating some new slides and I just closed and did not save so I lost my work.
PLEASE HELP -- this is the biggest issue i have all the time and my coworkers have to do the same thing and spend a ton of time rearranging the slides and half the time we just forget and start over.
6 Replies
Perhaps the main cause for sequence changing is using the “Jump to next slide” trigger. If you use the “Jump to [slideName]” trigger, the slides will stay in order.
If you are jumping to Next slide, the flow is the way it appears in Story View. If you jump to named slides, what you see in Story View doesn’t matter, the sequence will be what the triggers dictate.
My slides are set to jump to slide 7 when user clicks next and so on -- i always put the number of the slide, i never leave it as jump to the next slide when user clicks next.
also why does it say you can drag a slide to the blue arrow and drop? that never works in my courses so i have to spend an enormous amount if time fixing
i changed all the slides back to jump to next slide when user clicks next and same for previous and i can move the slides perfectly now but i was told I should always select the slide number, not to leave it just as "next slide".
Hi Christine,
Thank you for the update! Glad to hear that changing the trigger as Walt recommended to just include the Next and Previous slides did the trick.
Is there an E-Learning Challenge you are looking at for inspiration or a specific training you are trying to replicate on your end?
I'll defer to our community on their preferences when using slide-specific triggers vs. the next slide or previous slide triggers. I'm curious to hear what they'll say!
So what you see in Story view is SL’s best attempt to create a visual of how the course flows. Neither it nor the menu have any real relationship to how the learner will progress through the course. What controls the sequence of slides in the course is the jump triggers, If you jump to Next, moving the slide thumbnails will change the order. If your triggers jump to a specific slide, you cannot change the order or position of the slides in Story view. If you drag one, you can change its number, but not its location in the sequence. If you change to jumping to Next, any movement will change the slide order. That means that if the mouse twitches even a little bit while you are clicking the slide thumbnail, it can change its position. That’s why I always jump to a specific slide.
In short, stop “fixing” it. When you preview it, if the slides progress in the order you want, all is well. If you want to change the order, change the “jump to” triggers. You can safely ignore what you see in story view. One example may help you here: If you have a slide that has one trigger to advance, the target slide will be under and lined up with the source slide. On the other hand, if you have a slide from which a learner can advance to several other slides (like a menu slide), in Story view, the menu (source) will be on top, and the other slides (targets) will be lined up evenly under it. Story view is SL’s attempt to help you visualize, but in reality doesn’t control anything. The lines illustrate where the triggers send the flow, but don’t control it.