Storyline crashing constantly when using slide timeline preview

Hi Tom,

Really sorry about that. I'd start by seeing if any of the steps in this article apply to you and help resolve the issue. Otherwise, we'd be happy to take a closer look at it. Please submit a case, including your .story file, using the link below so our support team can assist you further:

http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/submit.php

Thanks!  

I'm having the same problem. It's just with one file so I figured the file must have been corrupt. My naming convention was fine, my file was on my hard drive, and the file was in the same folder as dozens of other Storyline files I have created, edited, previewed, and published without incident.

After I started completely recreating the file from scratch (no copy/paste from one file to another) and a few slides in I started having the same problem as I had with the previous file. I started only with Storyline elements so I could determine if one of my outside images had a problem, so all I had in the presentation was a large number of characters (some grouped, others not--all including animated), textboxes, and Storyline captions.

When I saved some of the character groups as PNGs and replaced the characters with images, the crashing because less frequent. Is there any way the characters, grouping, or animation could be causing the crashing upon previewing? It also didn't matter whether I used the timeline play button or the whole-screen preview button. Please help.

Hi Julie,

I'm sorry to hear about the crashing you've been running in to - and thanks for already looking into rebuilding the slides from scratch to reduce the possibility of corruption. It sounds like it's Storyline as a whole - not just the elements you're adding in or including in your course, so I'd begin by conducting the repair of Storyline and ensuring you're on the most recent update. Here are directions to repair SL2 and you'll want to make sure you're on Update 1. For SL1, the repair directions are here and you'll want to be on Update 7. 

Thanks so much for your quick reply.

I've done all the repairs, deleted temp files, reinstalled Storyline with update 7 (I'm using SL1), etc. The reason I don't think it's the program itself is that I can work on any of the other files I've created without incident. It is only this one file (and any other incarnations of it). And no matter what I do it still misbehaves. The only real differences between the courses I normally design and this one are the grouped characters and the automatic advancing. I routinely have ten-plus characters on each slide (though not present all at once), so that's not the issue, but they are normally not grouped. I also normally design user-advancing slides. Any other ideas of how to fix this problem? Thanks!

Just to connect threads for any users following, I just responded to a similar post here as well.

Hi Julie,

I see that you're also working with Leslie, and as she mentioned it may be best if you're able to share this .story file with us so that we can take a look at how you've set up the grouped characters and advancement. You can post it here so that we can take a look or use the link that Leslie shared to share it with our support team. 

I've just submitted my file to your support team. Thanks so much for your quick and kind responses and help.

Thanks Julie for the update and if you'd like to share your case number with me here I'm happy to follow along as well. 

Here it is Ashley: 00436756. I'm anxious to find out what comes of this issue! It seems as though many people have had similar troubles with the previewing function and if we can sort out what's causing the trouble, maybe we can help them, too!

Thanks Julie for the case number and I'll follow along as you work with our support engineers. 

Hi Julie,

I'm just following up as I see you're still working with Jayem and he was able to share a version of your course that behaved normally unless you had your original file open and then it would crash/freeze. I'm unsure what if anything Jayem changed in your file, so we'll continue to follow along.