Storyline crashes when inserting a question slide

Krista,

sorry to hear that.

Which version of SL are you using ?

There was an upgrade in December '12

Geert

Hi Geert,

Myself and my colleague have both installed the 2 updates that are available

Krista

Hi Krista,

Are you working with any files that aren't on your local hard drive, by any chance? It sounds like that's a problem when Storyline's trying to pull the file into the course or into a slide.

• 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 (this includes spaces and underscores).

Additional information regarding "Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces" in Windows operating systems can be found in the following Microsoft article.

Hello Christine

I'm Krista's co-worker.  Thank-you for the reply!  Unfortunately, your words of wisdom, aren't a solution for me.  :-(

• We never work from a network drive.
• The path is not even close to 260 characters
• no special charaters in the name - I even renamed the file with no spaces

The issue doesn't happen when I open a new Storyline project, so it seems to be related to something that I have done with my specific project.

I am able to use some question types without issue - hotspot, matching drag and drop.  But, T&F, multiple choice, multiple response do not work.  The same strange behaviour happens consistently.  I get the Storyline Error Report box, and the test question gets added, but it's "wonky".  None of the content past the first choice is saved - even the default feedback disappears.  I attached a screenshot.

Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated.  This affects 5 different modules that I am working on.  They all contain some screen casts, no audio, nothing fancy.   These are my first Storyline projects, and I was trying to keep them simple in hopes of avoiding this kind of thing. Needless to say, as I'm sure everyone can relate to, I have a really tight deadline for getting these modules done.  Thanks!     

Hi Heather,

this may be a long shot, but...

How about creating your question in quizmaker and then importing them into SL ?

Cheers

Geert

Hello again!

I looked at this a bit further this morning, with a fresh "Monday" brain. The problem seems to have something to do with the button sets. For example, a True/False question will insert 2 buttons - a true button and a false button - in a set called true/false. When the question slide gets inserted, it keeps the first button of the set but something seems to be wrong with the second button. While playing around, I reassinged the second button to the "none" button set. This allowed me to use the screen's built-in functionality to add another button to the true/false set and, so far, the question seems to be working.

I'm going to play with this a bit more and see if it works consistently. I'll post again when I know more.

Thanks everybody for your help / suggestions!! If you have any further ideas, please continue to provide them in case my tentative solution doesn't work.

Krista

Update: My momentary breakthrough does NOT work consistently. Oh well :-(  ... back to the drawing board.

Good morning Heather, Krista and Geert I hope you all had a fantastic weekend!

I'm sorry to hear you're still working with this Krista and Heather. It sounds like it's specific to some of the courses you're both working on. 

Heather, are you able to import the slides from one of the courses that's not functioning properly into a new one? 

Krista, this may work for you, as well. Couldn't hurt to try it out. If it does resolve the issue something may have happened with the original files. If it doesn't resolve it, it may be something to do with the systems you're both using, or the installations. 

Since this seems to be happening for both of you, are you working in similar environments? Do you both work in a user profile with administrative rights? 

If you haven't already, please try following the troubleshooting steps outlined in the article below:

Articulate Support > Unexpected or erratic behavior in Storyline

If that doesn't resolve the issue, can you please tell me what operating system you're both running? Also, is this happening with files you're both working on together, or are these separate projects?

Let me know how it goes.

Thanks!

Hi Christine,

Thanks so much for your reply.

We have determined that the issue is specific to the courses that are currently being built. From what we can tell, it has something to do with the fact that the story size has been modified. It's been adjusted to 1002 / 752. It's the same aspect ratio as the original size but for some reason it seems to be causing problems.

We've tried importing questions from another project and it doesn't work. In fact, we're getting the error message if we try to build the questions in a new story, if we've changed the size to match the size stated above. We also get the error messsage if we import slides from the existing story into a new one. There just seems to be some bug that is attached to that story (and that screen size?) that won't work with the true/false or multiple choice types of questions.

We've considered the uninstall / reinstall route but our IT folks are refusing to disable the UAT as shown in the instructions, stating that it places our computers at too much risk.

In terms of operating systems, I'm running Windows 7 and Heather is running Windows XP.

Hope that helps.

Krista

Hi Krista,

Thank you very much for the additional information. The only other suggestion I can provide at this point is to send one of the problem files over to our technical support team so we can test the files. Though, again, they may also request the troubleshooting steps I provided earlier. Either way, it would be good to confirm whether it's an issue with those files and if so, what can be done to fix it. 

You'll be able to attach the .STORY file on the second page of the following form:

Articulate Support - Submit a Support Case

Please be sure to include a description of your issue. Please also include the URL for this thread in the form. Also, please share the case number with me. You're welcome to do so here, or in a private message. This way I can follow the progress of the case and update this thread.

Thanks again, Krista!

Hi Christine,

Thanks so much for being willing to give us a hand figuring this out. From what we've been able to tell from our various attempts to troubleshoot, the bug seems to be related to the story size. If we open a new project and don't change the story size, we can insert questions without difficulty. If we open a new story, change the size to be the same as the existing project, we are not able to insert the questions.

We've found that we can build our own T/F or multiple choice style questions on a blank slide and convert it to free-form, so for the moment we have a workaround.

I think that we're just going to go with this solution. In the future, we will be more careful about changing the story size and hopefully a future update will fix whatever bug caused the problem.

Have a great day and thanks again for your help!

Krista

Good morning Krista,

I'm glad to hear you were able to narrow this down to the Story size. That does raise an eyebrows for me, though. I'm really curious why this would be happening. However, I totally understand that you'd prefer to use your current workaround, I'm sure you both need to finish the development of the courses. 

There are a couple of things I would suggest trying, though, just in case you have a moment to test this a little further with the original courses. First, try to make sure your zoom is set to 100%. Sounds simple, I know, but I've heard of some cases where setting the zoom above or below 100% can result in some really strange behavior. 

The second is DPI. Are you both running 96 DPI on your machines? If not, this may also be causing a problem when adjusting the Story size. 

If you have a moment, please follow the steps in the following article to confirm you're running the supported DPI for Storyline:

Articulate > Product Support > Storyline DPI support

Again, though, I totally understand if you prefer to stick to your workaround. I just want to provide some possible solutions, just in case you run into this issue again.

I hope you have a great day, Krista. Thank you very much for keeping me updated

Christine

Hi Christine,

We are both running 96 DPI.   I tried upping the zoom to 100% - no change in behaviour.

We're happy with the workaround we found, but I did submit a support case for you to have a look at the unusual behaviour.  I'd be interested in what I should do with future projects to avoid this kind of thing.  This is my first attempt with Storyline, so, really, who knows what kind of "operator error" may have caused this situation! 

I referenced this post in the support request.

Thank-you Christine and Geert for all your efforts! 

Heather 

Hi Heather,

Sounds good! I was able to find the case (#00322433 for my reference). I will definitely try to follow along with the progress and see if we're able to resolve this for you. 

I appreciate the information

Thanks again!

Christine