Storyline file size

Attachment on the message above says 0 Bytes. I'm going to try again:

Hi John

I checked your story size then created a new project file with same dimensions and imported your slides in.  The new size is around 7MB

Personally, I find if I do a lot of 'save as' actions the file size increases exponentially so I tend to copy a file and rename it if I am doing backups etc rather than 'save as' a new version number.

Just my 2 cents anyway.

Hi there, John.  I saw the same as Wendy when importing your file into a new project - around 7MB for a file size.

I unzipped your original .story file and saw that it contained a lot of media files, mostly duplicates.  I'm certain that's where the bloating is coming from.  I agree that your slide master set is not overwhelmingly large, but it looks like lots of edited versions of the same images are within the original .story file, even though they aren't being used.

Hopefully bringing your current project into a new file will work for you!

Hey John,

I took a similar look and see the same behavior Wendy is describing here. My file is attached as well.

We have seen this enough to have this information to share:

A project file might not immediately shrink in size when you delete assets. Storyline keeps deleted assets temporarily after you delete them in case you need to click Undo to restore them. The good news is your project file will eventually shrink, usually after saving it a couple times. But you can also get it to shrink right away by saving and closing the project file, then re-opening it and saving it again.

Great! So basically, re-importing the .story leaves out all the unused assets?

I will test this method out when I have a minute later today, and let you know how it goes. Thanks!

You got it John.

I realized the tutorial was not included, so here are some instructions for the import for you or anyone following along.

Hi,

One way to reduce your file size is to go into the templates and delete any unused ones. Sometimes there can be about 15 sets of templates if this is not cleaned out regularly. When you copy slides from one project to another it creates a new set of templates. Make sure all your slides are using one or two sets of templates and delete the rest of them (note you can only delete templates when they are not being used by a slide).  

For me, this is the best way to rapidly reduce the size of your .story file.   A recent one of mine shrunk from 190 MB to 20 MB just by doing this!

Julian

Thanks Julian! This is definitely a factor in my case, however the client specifically wants a large number of unused masters in there, because they are looking to use the file as a template for future projects and need many different layouts to use.

I have emphasized to them that when someone uses it, they should always remember to delete unused masters! :)

I'm having a similar problem. I was given a file that is 577,675 KB. I'm trying to split it into two files. But now I have two files that are huge (430,717 KB and 488,863 KB). I tried importing the larger one into a new file, but it only went down to 484,912 KB. I see from above that there might be duplicate files, but how do I get rid of them?

It's hard to even work with these files as it either crashes, or I can't save, or I can't close the file. 

Hey Steve,

Would you be able to share one of these files with us here so that we can take a look?

Hi there Steve,

Sorry to hear you've been wrestling with these large files. You can check for duplicate images by publishing the file and then opening the story_content folder. There you'll find all of the image files in your content.

If you're still getting stuck and need an extra hand with troubleshooting, our Support Engineers are ready to help. Simply open a case here, and we'll try and help you solve this!

I just opened a case.

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