Storyline 360 Running Very Slowly

Apr 11, 2017

Hello everybody,

Seemingly any function in Storyline 360 is working at a snail's pace. Earlier today it was working fine, but in the last 30 minutes it's become nearly unusable. I've tried restarting the program, restarting the computer, and closing all other programs - no luck. In addition, I installed the latest version of the software last week.

Any idea how to fix?

Thanks!

30 Replies
Alyssa Gomez

Hey Alexander,

Sorry this is slowing you down! Let's see if we can get you back up and running again. Is it possible that you’re working from somewhere other than your local C: drive?  Working from a network drive or a USB drive can cause a few different problems, and you can read more about that here.

If you're already working locally and things are still running slow, try these steps to fix erratic behavior in Storyline 360. And if that doesn't do the trick, reach our to our Support Engineers here, and they'll work with you one on one to troubleshoot further. They're available 24/7 to assist!

Marcus Albien

Hello,

I am facing the same issue on one slide of my project.

In order to solve the problem I isolated all elements of the slide to see what is causing these lags. First I thought the problem may be caused by shrinked images but there was no effect in deleting them. 

Surprisingly all delay disappeared when I deleted one of the two Textboxes on the basic slide.

However, it is not possible to insert any new text in the other textbox nor in a new one without having heavy lags again.

When copied into a new project everything is running fine. 

Any idea or advice on this issue? 

Many thanks

 

 P.S. For the moment i will just add the text when everything else is ready but I am still interested to come to know why this is happening.

 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Thomas,

It's hard to say without seeing the file, but it could be an element of corruption within the file or textbox itself? Have you looked at the best practices here to prevent file corruption?  I'd also want to suggest in the future, you import the slides in as shown here vs. copying/pasting them into a new file. 

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Jen,

Sounds like you believe large image files are the culprit of some slower behavior that you are experiencing?

Curious if the issue happens in any course you are working on or just this particular one?

If you cannot re-create the issue in a new course, I would advise to import the file into a new one and proceed.

If it's happening in any/all files, you should certainly conduct a repair of your software.

We are tracking some specific examples for replication, so you are certainly welcome to share your .story file with our support team here and we'll be sure to take a look.

Matthew Sakey

I'm right there with everyone else complaining about Articulate performance. It doesn't matter which .story file I'm working on; the application is absurdly slow (about 1-3 second delay between clicking something and any response). 

Most irritiating is the fact that the PC I'm working from is basically a tiny god. i7-7700K, 32GB memory, NVMe M2 SSD, GeForce 970. You have to try to make things run slow on this machine, but Storyline manages!

I'm looking forward to an update.

Walter Bosello

I'd like to add my feedback too. I've noticed when there are many elements on a slide (any project, really) correctly selecting an item gets some 200ms delay. when clicking outside and dragging to select multiple items often the program seems to instead select just one item and drag it where the mouse selection ends. This happens when performing the selection action fast (like I usually do when I work on most other programs)
I think this is due to this "200ms delay".
If then you're working on a slide layer it can get even harder to select and move objects.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Matthew and Walter,

I'm really sorry to hear you're having such trouble with Storyline, and I can see how frustrating that would be. As Leslie mentioned, there are a few troubleshooting steps we'd want to have you go through first, and if you're still seeing this slowness our Support Team is working one on one with folks to dig deeper into what's causing the slowdown. 

It's really helpful if you're able to share that level of detail with us, as we're actively working on some performance improvements and testing it against real courses is the best way to verify our fixes. 

Matthew Sakey

Hi Ashley,

Thank you for your response!

I admit I’m finding a lot of elements of Storyline very frustrating. It has so much potential, but interface elements and glaring capability absences are really getting to me (you literally cannot set triggers based on IF X = Y THEN Z; or if you can it takes a hundred steps instead of one).

That said I love that there’s a friendly community helping out with questions, and a friendly, responsive support staff like you… though I’m sad that often the community and support staff spend time inventing and sharing roundabout hacks to accomplish things that should be built into the program. We are talking about an app that costs a thousand dollars a year; I get the entirety of Adobe’s creative suite for less.

Anyway, the slow performance I experience in Storyline is fairly predictable and seems to get worse the longer the app is in use without a wholesale restart – though sometimes rebooting the PC makes no difference. I’m not working with large or complicated .story files, just pretty linear stuff weighing in at <200MB.

I’d be delighted to work with the support team and share files wherever necessary. I could also put together a screen recording or something that shows the experience on my end, though be warned it would probably be narrated by a sarcastic and increasingly frustrated user.

Thanks again! Looking forward to more improvements.

Matt

Martin Dean

Alyssa 

Is there an update on the slow-running issue?  I am having to wait around 30 seconds after placing an image in SL before I can resize, move or make any changes to it.  It is as if SL is taking a long time 'in shock' after just about any click or command.

You mentioned this is a priority, but there is apparently no updates for 10 months.

Please can you advise?

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Martin,

Thanks for reaching out and letting us know that you are still experiencing some slowness.

Do you know what version of Storyline you're using?

You can check by going to:
Help > About Articulate Storyline

We are currently on Build 3.31.19951.0 of Storyline 360. You can read all of the details and/or update here.

Kevin Clemence

Just ran into this same issue when building a critical project this weekend. Storyline 360 was running smoothly and I was building out a drag and drop interaction that involved importing 9 image files. I was in the process of using the built-in contrast adjustment filter when BAM...the tool throttled waaaaay back and took about 3-5 seconds to execute further mouse clicks. Deleting the whole slide fixed the problem, so I knew it was likely the images. Decided to apply the contrast filters, screenshot/saved the results I liked, deleted the images, and then imported the screenshots. This approach worked beautifully, and I am back up and running again. In my case, the application of the image contrast adjustment is what slowed down the application. Hopefully this info helps someone else down the road.

Allison Bell

I can second what Kevin just noted in his response about the source being images with color adjustment applied. When I had an image with a color adjustment, the performance was incredibly slow. My workaround will be to remove color adjustments, work to build/edit slides, and then apply it again (I'm using a color adjustment on several different images). Making the image with the color adjustment invisible doesn't seem to help at all. Not the best workaround since the color adjustment is part of the key visual, but at least it keeps me moving. I'd love to hear if others have a better suggested workaround.

EDIT: I was wrong about my original statement. If I turn off visibility of the image that has the color adjustment applied, the performance is normal. So, I've been toggling visibility off and on while I build/edit slide elements and that seems to work fine.

Leslie McKerchie

Thanks, Allison. 

Do you know what version of Storyline you're using?

You can check by going to:
Help > About Articulate Storyline

It sounds like you are able to consistently reproduce the issue, so with your permission, I'd like you to share your project file with our support engineers as we continue to investigate what's happening. You can share it privately by uploading it here. It will be deleted when troubleshooting is complete.

Justin Collinge

Hi Leslie - I'm having the same issues with mouse clicks taking 3-5 seconds to register & moving objects even longer. This is happening on my 'home' slide, which is complex in terms of moving parts & triggers but not on simpler slides in the same project. I've done all the checks you suggest & my CPU, GPU & RAM aren't being particularly challenged.

Storyline 360, Windows 10 latest build, i7  

It's making the project unworkable. I'll send my project file to the link above. Any advice really appreciated. 

Justin

Walter Bosello

Hi again. I think Kevin is on the right track here. I've recently had multiple nevative experiences due to images. Specifically there was an image in the slide master and anytime I worked with suck slide master things would get sluggish. Same goes for images on the slide. I think the higher rez. the Image is, the worse the  consequences are. Layers are an issue too but if there is no bg image in the main slide, then the situation gets overall better.
So my simple advice is: put a placeholder until your slide is done and then replace it with your image.