Save error message

May 14, 2012

Twice today I have been working in Storyline and received a pop-up error saying "This project can not be saved" once I get the error I am unable to save or even do a save as and rename the presentation. The first time I received the error the title of my presentation name was changed to untitled2 and I wasn't able to change it,  the second time the title stayed the same, but still unable to save it to my desktop or to a shared folder.

When I close out the presentation it gives me the pop-up asking if I want to save and I click save and nothing happens the only way to close the window out completely is to click on don't save.

Has anyone else seen this error and if you have do you know what happened or is it a bug?

69 Replies
Brian Batt

Jennifer Bircher said:

Yes, I did get a confirmation number that same day. Just haven't heard anything since. Thanks.


Hi Jennifer,

It looks like Gren responded the same day with the following:

Thanks for contacting Articulate Support! 

I understand that you are experiencing issues with low memory warnings and saving your fle in Storyline. 

Minimum system requirements for authoring and viewing Storyline content are listed here: 

http://articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=st1&id=4mau4vyvbq4n 

As listed in the above article, the minimum requirement is 512 MB. However, as your Storyline project gets more complex, especially when inserting lots of images and videos, then it requires more memory/RAM. 

Closing out other programs and processes running in the background normally resolves this issue, and should allow you to save. In addtion, did you try using the Save As feature, to try to save the project as a new file? 

Lastly, when creating, editing, or publishing a Storyline project, be sure you're working from your local hard drive (typically your C: drive). Working from a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, such as file corruption, an inability to save changes you've made to your project, and loss of resources. 

Please review the following article for more information: 

http://articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=st1&id=cw6rhkr2xpxr 

===========================================================

I'll reopen the case and let the support team know that you're still having issues.

Jennifer Bircher

Thanks, Brian. For some reason, I did not get Gren's email message. Regarding the response:

  • My company-issued computer has 4 GB of RAM, and don't think my course is very large based on all the samples I've seen. The crashes started happening with only about 20% of the course being developed.
  • Closing other programs did not solve the issue.
  • I was unable to do a Save As - it still crashed.
  • I am working on the course from my local C: drive.

Closing and reopening the program occasionally does seem to help, but it takes a very long time to save and re-open - up to 1 minute. Also, as mentioned in my original post, my file can take up to 926,396K in memory - seems quite large compared to other programs?

Brian Batt

Hi Jennifer,

Did you receive a reply from our support team yet?  It looks like they sent one about 30 minutes ago.  Please reply to that email with the requested information so that they can continue troubleshooting the issue.

Regarding memory usage, Windows allows 32 bit applications to address up to 2GB of RAM.  Anytime we get close to that limit, we flush out memory to prevent any issues.  However, RAM usage will not cause the error message that you're seeing.  Thus, I believe that the problem is likely project-specific.  Once we get the project file and a screencast of the issue per the support case reply, we'll be able to investigate it further.  

Karen M.

I am having the same memory issue over and over again with several different projects.  I'm working with the support team, but I really need someone to roll up their sleeves, remote into my machine and see what the heck is going on, because we just bought seven copies of Storyline, and the two of us who have started course development are experiencing these crashes.

Brian, I'll be around tomorrow if someone has time to talk.  I'm away from my desk the rest of the afternoon.

Thanks!

Brian Batt

Karen M. said:

I am having the same memory issue over and over again with several different projects.  I'm working with the support team, but I really need someone to roll up their sleeves, remote into my machine and see what the heck is going on, because we just bought seven copies of Storyline, and the two of us who have started course development are experiencing these crashes.

Brian, I'll be around tomorrow if someone has time to talk.  I'm away from my desk the rest of the afternoon.

Thanks!


Hi Karen,

I'd recommend continuing to work with our support team on the issue.  They'll likely ask you for some additional information regarding your environment so that they can forward the information to the dev team.  Thanks for your patience.

John Pieterse

Dear all,

Just to share my latest experience. Trying to save on my XP computer never gave a Low Memory message. Building the same size of projects on my new Win 7 computer (i7 processor - 16 Gb memory) gives the Low Memory and I am unbale to save. No other programmes are opened.

I have returned to my old XP machine untill this bug (as to my opinion it is) has been solved. Fortunately up to now , this has been my only complaint about SL

Regards,

John

John Pieterse

Hi Mike,

As stated I also ran into the same problem and managed to work around it "slightly". My production contained 4 video's converted from a VOB dvd file to mpeg4. I noticed that the avarage size after conversion was even slightly bigger that the VOB one. Roughly around 350 mb each. At the odd time that I was permitted to publish the movie size was reduced to around 35 Mb !

This is what I did. I uploaded each mpeg 4 movie to my server and then downloaded them using the free Realplayer. The original mpeg4 file of 350 mb became a 30 mb mpg file after downloading. I replaced the heavy video files by the slim downloaded ones and was able to save my production.

It is a strange way of working perhaps but it did the trick. It would however be easier when SL reduced the size directly after inserting it, instead of doing so only when published.

I hope that this also will work for you!

Regards,

John

Mike Bethany

Thanks for the reply John but my current project doesn't have any videos in it, yet. It's just a rough story board/outline where I planned to plug in my resources as they are created. I'm wondering if there is a massive memory leak in Storyline that causes issues if you have a lot of objects on a lot of slides (we prefer to use our own menu system so have that on each page).

Jesse Spinella

I've been checking the folder I save my project in to make sure it has the latest save in it before I continue on. If it has the current time and date on the last save then I know its okay. Sometimes that message comes up for me but it really does save. I find that if I just close out the program and reload it gives me the most recent version.

Usually a reset will correct the saving issue. I find a lot of times its also when you rename a file under Save As, Storyline has an issue with that and gives you the red X with a cannot save file message.

I've been saving every 3 minutes with this program ever since I started getting that type of problem. It's not paranoia if the problem's real. lol. I've reported this bug too.

Mike Bethany

Thanks for the info Jesse. I've had files corrupted by the "Not enough memory" bug so I cycle through three save files to make sure I don't lose my previous work. Once you've lost a day's work to a corrupt save you don't ever want to take that chance again.  I also save to a Dropbox folder so I have automatic versioning.

Mike Bethany

Brent Berheim said:

Mike - just a thought - could you put the menu system on a slide master so that you wouldn't need it on each slide?


Sounds like a good idea!

My menu needs to be dynamic based on the slide so it won't be perfect. Like some a slide will have a button enabled while others wont. They also need to go to different places based on the logic of the interactions. Like I'll have a slide where the next button warns you that you didn't complete an exercise and I do this by showing a layer. I may have that interaction a few times where the "That's OK I don't want to finish" type button on that layer jumps ahead several slides or even to the next scene.

I might be able to get away with it if I try to standardize my interactions or I could at least use it for the most common where there are no special cases and only use the full menu for the special cases.

Thanks for the idea.

Chad Carlile

I am seeing this "low memory" error frequently, across multiple computers, with all other applications closed and plenty of memory. 

It sounds like I am encountering the same issues described at the beginning of this post. I saw that several people submitted their .story files for support, so I am curious if the support team or anyone found a solution?  

Jesse Spinella

So, I had this problem in the past, however, a post by a user Tom Dorsey on this thread told me about a product by ntCore called a 4gb patch. You can find out more info on it here. The patch is a 3rd party product that I'm certain Articulate won't support, however, it's done the trick for me. I haven't seen the issue since I downloaded it. The site is virus free. And a lot of reviews on it says it works great. 

Since SL is built on a x32 bit os and not a x64 bit os, you can't take full advantage of all the memory on your machine (if you have a x64 bit os). If you have at least 6-8gb ram (recommended) this will help those error messages.

But keep in mind, it'll probably not be supported by Articulate.

Jesse

Mike Bethany

Chad Carlile said:

I am seeing this "low memory" error frequently, across multiple computers, with all other applications closed and plenty of memory. 

It sounds like I am encountering the same issues described at the beginning of this post. I saw that several people submitted their .story files for support, so I am curious if the support team or anyone found a solution?  


70% of the time I'm able to get it to save by saving to a new file (make sure it's on a local drive).

20% of the time I have to shutdown everything and then try to save.

10% of the time there is nothing I can do.

If you have a file that can be opened but if you make any changes to it you get the out of memory error try this:

Create a new Storyline.

Change the size of the Storyline to the same size as the bad file. (if you've never changed the size don't worry about it)

Import the old Storyline into the new Storyline. (http://community.articulate.com/tutorials/products/importing-from-another-storyline-project.aspx)

That's fixed the bad files all most every time.

Mike Bethany

Jesse Spinella said:

So, I had this problem in the past, however, a post by a user Tom Dorsey on this thread told me about a product by ntCore called a 4gb patch. You can find out more info on it here. The patch is a 3rd party product that I'm certain Articulate won't support, however, it's done the trick for me. I haven't seen the issue since I downloaded it. The site is virus free. And a lot of reviews on it says it works great. 

Since SL is built on a x32 bit os and not a x64 bit os, you can't take full advantage of all the memory on your machine (if you have a x64 bit os). If you have at least 6-8gb ram (recommended) this will help those error messages.

But keep in mind, it'll probably not be supported by Articulate.

Jesse


Unfortunately his problem has nothing to do with the 4GB limit of the OS but has everything to do with a big ol' memory leak in Storyline.

Tom Dorsey

Mike Bethany said:

 Unfortunately his problem has nothing to do with the 4GB limit of the OS but has everything to do with a big ol' memory leak in Storyline.


The patch allows the app to use up to 4gb on a 64 bit system.  Though it doesnt fix the memory leak, it prevents the program from crashing by allowing it to have a higher memory limit. I haven't had a memory crash since.

Tom

Diane Boewe

I'm trying to Publish, and am unable to due to receiving memory error message... Also, when I try to click on the Player button I am also receiving the memory error message.

I've closed everything, shut down non essential programs, etc. and still can't move forward. I have enough memory on my computer and I am working on the C: drive, etc.  I've been creating courses (huge and small)  in Storyline for months and have never had a problem with memory...

I will submit a report.

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