SOS! Deadline looming and new to Storyline - can't edit a slide I made, everything greyed out, three weeks left of free trial

Jan 09, 2023

Hi e-learning heroes,

I can't edit a slide I made a week ago - everything greyed out - see Loom video below!

https://www.loom.com/share/13b6f142600846b89ecd43871be9b34a

If you can help I will be so grateful as I need to finish this project in my 'free' time on top of my secondary school teacher role!

Already tried the following...

-I saved it to my laptop desktop, so it's on my C drive and saved locally. I have three weeks remaining of my free trial, so it shouldn't be a subscription issue.

-Experts from the Digital Learning Institute have suggested starting a new project and copying the slide into the new one - I have the same issue.

-Someone else suggested unticking the padlock at the bottom right hand corner - it's greyed out so I can't tick or untick it.

-I saw it could me something about 'master slide view' - changing to this mode didn't help either.

 

It must be something silly/simple! Wisdom very gratefully received!

Thank you,

Ruth

5 Replies
Eric Santos

Hi Ruth,

Welcome to the E-Learning Heroes community! I appreciate your patience in conducting troubleshooting. 

There seems to be no object in the timeline; it's as if what I see in the slide is an image background, and there is no object available to work with. Can you confirm this? If I am mistaken, it would be helpful to see the Storyline file to understand why this is happening. Do you mind attaching your project to this discussion or privately in a support case?

Judy Nollet

Hi, Ruth, 

In your video, you have a Master Layout selected when you tried to click the objects. However, it looks like everything is on the Master Slide:

Go to VIEW> SLIDE MASTER again, and select the Master Slide to see if that's where the objects are.

FYI:  Anything on the Master Slide will be on all of the associated Master Layouts. That's why both the Master Slide and Master Layout look the same in your example.

Walt Hamilton

As Judy said, you don't have any slides; you have a Master full of objects. I suspect you went to the Master and placed a background graphic on it. You may have tried several before you found one you liked. You were pleased with the result; so pleased in fact, that you forgot to close the Master view and return to the slide view before you started adding objects to the slide. Since you placed those objects on the "Master" layout, every new layout you create (like "Blank") will look like the master. Then when you return to Slide or Story view, every new slide you create will look like the "Blank" layout. That's the purpose and special power of master layouts. Since those objects are on a master, you cannot change any of them, except by changing them on the Master.

Choose View -> Slide Master. Select the top slide of the thumbnails on the left. If you roll over it, it will be named Master Slide "Graphite".  Press CTRL-A to select all. Everything will be selected. Press CTRL-X to cut all. Everything will be copied to the clipboard and deleted from the master. Choose View -> Slide View. You will see a blank slide. It will have a brown background, because that graphic is placed on the background of the master, and as such cannot be copied or cut. It will show on all new slides. Press CTRL-V to paste the clipboard. Everything will be copied to slide 1.1.