Storyline 3 errors - "The process cannot access the file [filename] because it is being used by another process" and more

Well, it's happening again - the fix lasted 2 days. 

My IT supoort team at work installed the latest update - I'm using update 4: 3.4.15731.0 now. I've also made sure I'm following all the guidelines given by the Articulate Support team - I'm working from my desktop (only this and my recycle bin on my desktop, plus a few shortcuts). I rebooted my machine, I've been opening the renamed copy of the file from File Explorer, and I don't have anything backing up my data in the background. 

I also renamed my file to a one-word name, because I saw a thread that spaces and long filenames can cause trouble. BTW, this is a different file than the one I had originally reported - all of my Storyline projects are doing this now.

My file saved successfully Friday and today a few times, but just now, I got the same error again. 

Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Sonya; I'm so sorry that error is rearing its head again.

I've given my teammate, Renz, your latest update. He'll be in touch with some next steps shortly after carefully analyzing these details. Appreciate you continuing to reach out, and I'll also be sharing updates here once we get to the root!

Is there a solution for this? I've been facing this issue for the past two days. I'd already uninstalled and reinstalled Articulate. But it doesn't seem to help. 

Hi, Jayashree! Really sorry you've hit this roadblock, too. We're here to help!

I took a peek at Sonya's case and saw that Renz shared some helpful tips to start:

Please also check the following after troubleshooting and updating: 

• Ensure you're working locally with the latest version of Storyline 3 
• Close any other instances of Storyline in your Task Manager 
• Reboot your machine 
• Copy and rename your .story file in File Explorer, and then open the new file from there 
• Check for any applications that 'back up' your data running in the background 

Looking at the screenshot, the E: drive could be the culprit. Are you able to copy the .story file to the C: drive and then attempt to save?

Let me know how you make out with moving the file to the local hard drive; I'll be standing by!

PANIC !!!

Same thing. I had not used SL3 for a couple of weeks. When I came back it suggested an upgrade. Went ahead, no trouble. First day after saving a few slides I got the same message 

I tried to save under different name and even different directory, no luck. It created a gazillion copies

only one copy of articulate running

and this is on the C drive...

Any logs you want ? I'll leave the machine on.

After the first day problem i saved the file after a small change to reassure myself it was working and it did.. but later on the problem came back !

Follow-up...

Well i decided to crash the work: i did a million save and save as and finally closed WITHOUT saving

turns out SL3 was lying to me...  it did save ! Now i did not check the couple hundred slides in there but the last few ones i did were correct...

Pfwww.. but still need to be fixed !

OK same problem toady .. is anyone reading these ?

Hey Philippe,

Yes! I was popping in to suggest working directly with our support engineers but looks like you have reached out, so you should be hearing from someone soon.

I'm going to make a note of your posts here so that you're on the same page when you get started.

Thanks! I have the page open so hopefully they can remote in.

Sniff sniff

Oh no Philippe,

Was this after the instruction that Anna was able to share with you?

I'm sharing your latest post with her in your support case.

A little before. Fundamentally Anna suggested to use the "Microsoft fix it tool:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ph/help/17588/fix-problems-that-block-programs-from-being-installed-or-removed

Once the above has been done, please follow the steps in this article to try and fix it:

https://www.articulate.com/support/article/Storyline-3-How-to-Fix-Unexpected-or-Erratic-Behavior

Please make sure that you are logged-in as an admin user, disable UAC and your antivirus software (if any) temporarily before installing the application."

For those with the same issue. I have done this and the first saving was working as expected. I will continue to monitor and report. This was actually the same version I had (Aug 16).

For others who might have the same issue, at least be reassured that although SL3 reports it cannot save the file, it actually does ! So the work is not lost, just saved with incremental names.

I did these steps, run the MS Fix-it, removed SL3 and reinstalled SL3 (Aug 16 version)
But I still get the same error :(

Success thanks to Jon Holmberg !! The issue was that one of my backup program that runs continuously in the background was marking the file as "in use". Simply stopping that program when I use Articulate fixed the problem !

Thanks Jon !

Yay! So glad to hear that Philippe :) Thanks for popping back in with an update and for sharing the solution with us.

That's how we all learn :)

I had not caught that because i have 3 backup programs (yes a little OCD I know !) and one was set to run unattended in the background, and only appears as a PROCESS in task manager, so hard to fish that one out !

I am having the same issue. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the SL 3, looked at background programs and tried moving it into different folders with no luck. Also, mine is not saving the changes I am making. Any more help and suggestions would be appreciated.

Maybe check in Task Manager if you have anything running that could be "locking" the file.. in my case it was a backup program that marked the file as a file to back up, and prevented any changes to it. So try to disable continuously running backup programs.

But at least in my case i could Save As, and actually even the normal Save did work, just that SL3 reported that it could not although it did. You can check that in Explorer: look at the time the file was created, then save and note that the time was actually changed !

Good luck :)

Thanks, Philippe, for paying it forward with what you've learned!

Steven, if you're having trouble, feel free to reach out to our support engineers here.  It sounds like you've tried what we've suggested here already, so our experts can dig deeper with you in a case.

I have tries all the fixes mentioned above and I have also contacted Anna. So far no luck. I went through all the programs that are running and I could not see anything that would cause this but I don't know a whole lot about the programs that are running. Some I don't have access to stop anyway. Crystal - I am assuming that Anna is one of the support engineers; is that correct?

Hi Steven.  Yes, I see your case with Anna!  I'll follow along there as well.  Continue to work with her, and feel free to loop in any help desk or IT folks at your place of business!

Philippe, Do you happen to know what the name of the back up program that was causing the issue was? I have looked through the active processes but cant see one that would be causing the issue. I have followed all the instructions from Storyline engineers but still no solution. I have got almost 2 days of work into the fix and have involved my IT dept as well.

I am running on Windows 7 Professional, service pack 1, have update Adobe Flash a couple times and uninstalled and reinstalled SL 3 at least 4 times.

Yes for me the problem was a program called NETBAK from QNAP

Thanks Phillippe!