Slide Number Variable Issues
Feb 21, 2024
I've built a template of a course and added slide number variables. The format should be number of slide in project OF number total slide in project. For example, 1 of 18.
Pictured below is the textbox with the variables as it appears in storyview. 
However, when I preview the project the "total number in project" changes. It's somehow adding 20 extra slides.
Two scenes in the project are excluded. These are the test slides, see below.
I'm completely puzzled where it's getting these 20 slides from. Can anyone help. I've also attached the course itself.
7 Replies
Hi Ivanna. You have two question banks of 10 questions each. If you reduce the number of questions, you will see the total slide count reduce by the same amount. Despite marking them as excluded, the variable still seems to include the questions that will be asked as well. Not sure if this is a bug or a normal behavior. I have never used this feature before. You could set up a separate variable to total slides less the questions, but I don't know if the behavior will change in the future.
The question banks have 15 questions in each. The random draw is supposed to include 10 of them for the tests. As indicated from the 3rd picture, they should be excluded from the total. Why would the variable pull in the questions when told not to and why would it show the correct number in Storyline view versus Preview?
The discrepancy would suggest a bug. I just went back several versions to 3.79 from last summer, and the result is the same; the 20 drawn questions are included in the count when published but not in Storyline view. Short of waiting for this to be fixed, you may just have to work around it for this project.
Thank you. Now that I know this is a bug I can work with my team to figure out a work around. Appreciate your input.
I put in a support ticket to report this bug. I recieved a very informative response. It's actually not a bug but the options I had chosen for the variables.
Below is a slide seen in preview. As you can see one set says 4 of 44 and the other says 4 of 24.
When choosing the "project order" option, as I had done, you get the 4 of 44 response because this option does include the questions that will be pulled from the random question draw slide. Because I had two pulling 10 each it showed the total as 44. The actual question slides cannot be excluded using this option.
However, using the "player menu order" provides the correct total that I wanted, 4 of 24, because the question slides are not included in the menu and the other test related slides are also removed.
Glad you got it resolved Ivanna. I have to say, none of that would be clear from the interface, especially since the results display differently between Storyline view and published outputs. I guess we all learned something :)
I agree with you 100%. My co-worker and I reviewed both options. They appeared to do the same thing. However, the test course, at that time, didn't have question banks in them. There was also no place on the Articulate website that we could find that described the differences between the two options and why you would choose one of the other.