Storyline 360 freezing (Preview and Review)

May 22, 2018

Hi - a colleague has developed a story that consistently freezes in both Preview (scene) and Review. I have created several versions, all of which eventually end up freezing. At first, it seemed as if one slide was causing the issue; removed that slide and the issue persists. Then I thought I saw a pattern - the "freeze" was happening on the 9th user click into the course (Chrome and Firefox); removed some of the animations and the freeze did not happen until later. Have attempted several other solutions with no positive results. Suggestions?

story file attached (13dot1letstryagainv1.story)

Also having all kinds of "save" issues - error message says file cannot be saved because another user is working on the file (no one else knew about the file, was not posted to Team slides). Try to overwrite - no go. Only option is to save as a copy - having to create 4 copies of one file is counterproductive. Happening today; also happened on Saturday and Sunday when I know no one else was using Storyline at the time.

 

11 Replies
Crystal Horn

Hi there, Mark.

I found what appeared to be several corrupted Tables in your slides.  If you reused slides or copied a single corrupted table onto several slides, that could be the reason so many are found in your project.

Those tables stopped certain slides from previewing.  When I removed them, the slide previewed normally.  Here are the ones that I replaced with text boxes:

  • Slide 1.8 table 4
  • 1.12 table 4
  • 1.22 table 6
  • 1.26 table 2

There are still more to do, but I'm attaching your modified file so that you know how to continue to fix those!

Tell me a little more about why you chose to use a single cell table instead of a text box.  Is there a feature that appealed to you more with tables?  It's good for us to know how you're using Articulate to build your courses!

Let me know if that helps!

Mark Zwolski

Hi Crystal - thank you for the quick response. I've shared the information with my colleague who was building the course. She was not aware that "tables" were in play - must have been the result of her copying and pasting from an existing (non-Storyline) course she is updating. Pretty sure she was expecting to see text boxes, not tables.

All by accident, not by design. Looks like we're good to go!

Thanks again; you've been most helpful.

Katie Riggio

Hi, Julie. Thanks for sharing your .story file!

I took a look and was able to reproduce the spinning wheel during Preview. Yikes! After some digging, it appears that the slider on slide 1.4 is the culprit–here's a quick Peek of what I saw.

A few options can be to remove the background slider on that particular slide, or maybe even insert a shape instead. Let me know what you think, as I'd love to dig into more options for your goal. ☺️

And while it's tough to nail down why something on a slide can become corrupt, these best practices that can help mitigate the risk. I hope that helps, and I'll be standing by! 

Julie Yamamoto

Katie,  Thanks so much for your work. My colleague followed your easy directions -- I presume deleted the slider -- and the file is fixed! As you can imagine, this was quite a relief since our nightmare was to have to re-create the lesson. I'm distributing the "best practices" link to our other Storyline users. Thank you again. You guys are awesome.

Katie Riggio

Welcome, kamaleswaran. Appreciate you sharing your file!

I see the spinning wheel when trying to preview your file in Storyline 360, Update 24. It seems that the culprit lies in slide 1.4, as I can view other slides without any issues. 

After more testing, I found that Next Arrow 1 is corrupt. Removing this object should resolve the freezing issue.

1.4

Could you give that a try on your end, and let me know how you go? I'll be here!

Katie Riggio

Happy to hear the project loads on your side as well, kamaleswaran! 😊

I'm glad you asked about the process. Here's how I found the culprit:

  1. I previewed the file, as is, to see what's happening.
  2. The course just showed a spinning wheel during preview.
  3. I previewed each scene to see where the source of the issue. Since I couldn't successfully load scene 1, that meant that the corrupt object was in one of those slides.
  4. I deleted objects one by one on each of the slides in Scene 1 ..until eureka! Deleting Next Arrow 1 resulted in a successful launch.

Here's a quick Peek recording to show the main steps in action. If we can be of any other help, please let us know! 

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