I Cannot open one of my .story projects. I had worked on it just a couple days ago and everything seemed fine. I've tried all the below steps.
Work on your local drive (your C: drive).Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, including file corruption, loss of audio, and other unexpected behavior.
You should also make sure the directory path to your project files and your published output is less than 260 characters(for example C:\Articulate). Avoid using special characters, accents or symbols in your file names.
I'd also try opening a new Storyline project and import this older one into the blank project.
This is a huge project and it will REALLY be terrible if I have to start over. If there is no solution, how can I assure this won't happen again??
So sorry you've hit this road block, Kolton. That's never a good message to see, so let's try to locate a working version of your project in your temp files. Here's how to check:
1) Open this folder in Windows Explorer: %appdata%\Articulate\Storyline
2) Scan the contents of this folder for a file that starts with the name of your project. If you find one, copy it to your desktop. If you find more than one, copy the latest version to your desktop.
3) Change the file extension of the copy on your desktop from *.tmp to *.story.
4) Double-click the file to open it in Storyline.
File corruption is unpredictable, and there's no straightforward way to determine what causes it. Common causes are environmental (disk errors, power outages, improper shutdowns), viruses, failed Windows updates, and even file size (i.e., very large files have a higher risk of corrupting). You may want to review the general best practices here to help prevent future file corruption, and it looks like you've already tried some of the tips listed there.
Please let me know if you have any luck checking the temp files. I'm crossing my fingers for you!
Thanks, Alyssa. I'm just about done recreating the whole thing. Luckily I save my quizzes and engages separately. They opened fine. Hopefully this doesn't happen again, but if it does I'll try your suggesting above.
However, I do have another question. Let me know if I'm doing something incorrectly. When I Import an Engage or Quiz into my project, I am prompted to choose whether to insert it into the current scene or an new scene. No matter what I choose, that slide always gets put into a new scene.
Hm, I'm not seeing that on my end. I am able to import Engage and Quizmaker slides into the current scene of my Storyline 360 project. Would you be able to record a quick Peek of the behavior you're seeing?
ugh, Hi Alyssa. I am having this problem now and none of the fixes seem to work. No temp files in that folder since 3/30, so my current work is not represented there. I was dealing with this yesterday and then had to recreate the project from scratch. After working on it all day, I rebooted and now none of my new files can be opened by storyline with the same error message.
Thanks for contacting us to share that you are experiencing a similar issue. The file you've shared here does not open for me either and only shows that's it's 1MB.
Are you working with your software and files on your local drive, typically your C: Drive?
Since the issue has now occurred on more than one file, it may be your software install.
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 3.38.21861.0 of Storyline 360. You can read all of the details here. If you are on the latest build, I'd recommend a quick repair of your software.
We do recommend disabling the automatic sync of your files to a cloud storage drive to avoid erratic issues like file corruption. You can read other tips on this topic here.
I just lost my whole project to a corrupt file. Lesson learned. I will need to make frequent backups every time I edit a file from here on out. My co-worker and I have had to many incidents of files that get corrupt for one reason or another. I looked in my tmp folder. Nothing was there. I was hoping it had autosaved. It didn't. I have to start this project all over again from scratch.
I'm sorry to hear you ran into an issue with file corruption! This discussion shares a couple of helpful tips to prevent it in the future and I wanted to offer some other thoughts.
I had to recreate a whole weeks worth of one of my projects because the file had become corrupted or it was created in an older version of Storyline 360. Whatever the case is for this corrupted file. I utilized the same graphics, videos, sound effects, text that I used in the project that got corrupted. I saved 2 copies of this brand new file I had just created. It took me another week to create it. When I closed both of them and reopened. Low and behold. The file was corrupted again. You can't possibly imagine my frustration that not only I have but my supervisor as well. She is fed up and rightfully so. It could be the something within the assets in the file but I'm not sure. All of my other files work just dandy. I'm going to have to restart this module a 3rd time now and its going to take me another weeks worth of work to get this done but believe me. I'm getting good practice on this particular module so I am getting faster at it with every time it goes corrupt on me.
...and whats the deal with it not auto saving anymore like it used to. It usually saves the file when it shuts down improperly or something goes wrong. I'm beyone frustrated here.
The auto-recovery feature of Storyline 360 is specific to the software shutting down unexpectedly. It's not an auto-save feature. You can read more about it here if needed.
It does sound like you're running into issues repeatedly though and I've opened a support case on your behalf so that you can work directly with one of our support engineers. I've included all the details that you've shared here and you should be hearing from someone soon.
I found that the issue with the file continually corrupting was not the software but it was a video I downloaded from Envato elements that was a mov file that didn't have the correct encoding. I had to convert the mov file into an mp4 file and then it worked without corrupting the file. Hope this helps someone.
11 Replies
So sorry you've hit this road block, Kolton. That's never a good message to see, so let's try to locate a working version of your project in your temp files. Here's how to check:
1) Open this folder in Windows Explorer: %appdata%\Articulate\Storyline
2) Scan the contents of this folder for a file that starts with the name of your project. If you find one, copy it to your desktop. If you find more than one, copy the latest version to your desktop.
3) Change the file extension of the copy on your desktop from *.tmp to *.story.
4) Double-click the file to open it in Storyline.
File corruption is unpredictable, and there's no straightforward way to determine what causes it. Common causes are environmental (disk errors, power outages, improper shutdowns), viruses, failed Windows updates, and even file size (i.e., very large files have a higher risk of corrupting). You may want to review the general best practices here to help prevent future file corruption, and it looks like you've already tried some of the tips listed there.
Please let me know if you have any luck checking the temp files. I'm crossing my fingers for you!
Thanks, Alyssa. I'm just about done recreating the whole thing. Luckily I save my quizzes and engages separately. They opened fine. Hopefully this doesn't happen again, but if it does I'll try your suggesting above.
However, I do have another question. Let me know if I'm doing something incorrectly. When I Import an Engage or Quiz into my project, I am prompted to choose whether to insert it into the current scene or an new scene. No matter what I choose, that slide always gets put into a new scene.
Thanks again!
Hm, I'm not seeing that on my end. I am able to import Engage and Quizmaker slides into the current scene of my Storyline 360 project. Would you be able to record a quick Peek of the behavior you're seeing?
ugh, Hi Alyssa. I am having this problem now and none of the fixes seem to work. No temp files in that folder since 3/30, so my current work is not represented there. I was dealing with this yesterday and then had to recreate the project from scratch. After working on it all day, I rebooted and now none of my new files can be opened by storyline with the same error message.
Hi Tony,
Thanks for contacting us to share that you are experiencing a similar issue. The file you've shared here does not open for me either and only shows that's it's 1MB.
Since the issue has now occurred on more than one file, it may be your software install.
Help > About Articulate Storyline
We are currently on Build 3.38.21861.0 of Storyline 360. You can read all of the details here. If you are on the latest build, I'd recommend a quick repair of your software.
We do recommend disabling the automatic sync of your files to a cloud storage drive to avoid erratic issues like file corruption. You can read other tips on this topic here.
I just lost my whole project to a corrupt file. Lesson learned. I will need to make frequent backups every time I edit a file from here on out. My co-worker and I have had to many incidents of files that get corrupt for one reason or another. I looked in my tmp folder. Nothing was there. I was hoping it had autosaved. It didn't. I have to start this project all over again from scratch.
Hi Heinee,
I'm sorry to hear you ran into an issue with file corruption! This discussion shares a couple of helpful tips to prevent it in the future and I wanted to offer some other thoughts.
I hope those resources help prevent any future headaches, and if you need more help our Support Team is standing by.
I had to recreate a whole weeks worth of one of my projects because the file had become corrupted or it was created in an older version of Storyline 360. Whatever the case is for this corrupted file. I utilized the same graphics, videos, sound effects, text that I used in the project that got corrupted. I saved 2 copies of this brand new file I had just created. It took me another week to create it. When I closed both of them and reopened. Low and behold. The file was corrupted again. You can't possibly imagine my frustration that not only I have but my supervisor as well. She is fed up and rightfully so. It could be the something within the assets in the file but I'm not sure. All of my other files work just dandy. I'm going to have to restart this module a 3rd time now and its going to take me another weeks worth of work to get this done but believe me. I'm getting good practice on this particular module so I am getting faster at it with every time it goes corrupt on me.
...and whats the deal with it not auto saving anymore like it used to. It usually saves the file when it shuts down improperly or something goes wrong. I'm beyone frustrated here.
Hi Heinee,
The auto-recovery feature of Storyline 360 is specific to the software shutting down unexpectedly. It's not an auto-save feature. You can read more about it here if needed.
It does sound like you're running into issues repeatedly though and I've opened a support case on your behalf so that you can work directly with one of our support engineers. I've included all the details that you've shared here and you should be hearing from someone soon.
I found that the issue with the file continually corrupting was not the software but it was a video I downloaded from Envato elements that was a mov file that didn't have the correct encoding. I had to convert the mov file into an mp4 file and then it worked without corrupting the file. Hope this helps someone.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.