Storyline file size

Aug 31, 2012

Hi all,

I am curious about the Storyline file size (not the publish size). Here are two case study:

1. Start with a new file, and just created one slide. The file size is around 165KB.

2. Start with existing file that has 65 slides. The file size is around 40MB. Deleted all the slide except one slide. The file size went down to 2MB.

So here is my question? Why can the file size does not go down even more? Is Storyline keeping all the "junk"?

Can someone explain this? and if there is a way to "optimize" the file size?

Thanks in advance.

55 Replies

3 years ago04/07/21 at 2:02 pm (UTC)

Have you tried publishing the work in progress? I recently used Replace Image to shrink a lot of images, but it seems like the file size shrunk after a Publish.

Another thing I discovered in the Replace feature was the ability to see how many times an image was used. In my case, instead of "replacing" an image, I deleted the second instance of an image, went to the first instance of an image, then copy/pasted it at the location of the second instance. Storyline counted that as one image used twice, instead of two images.

Frank Pietrantoni

3 years ago04/07/21 at 2:10 pm (UTC)

Keep in mind that "best practice" includes saving valuable files to a location that is backed up (preferably a daily, organizational backup with redundancies) on a continual basis.

For example, in our organization only network and cloud based storage is systematically backed up routinely. Laptop and Desktop local hard drives are not backed up by the organization... hence the end user is responsible for doing that, and/or is responsible for any lost data due to a local drive failure.

DOMETIC Academy

3 years ago04/07/21 at 2:23 pm (UTC)

This post was removed by the author

3 years ago04/07/21 at 2:23 pm (UTC)

I did a publish now, and the zipped scorm file turns out to be only 34 mb, so that's good. But did you really mean that your storyline file got reduced after you did a publish? This did not happen for me. The storyline file is still 207 mb. And I even tried a new "save as" after the publish.

Most of my images are only used once. but sure, I went in and deleted a copy of a slide that I had saved as a backup alternative version of a slide I had experimented a bit on about the design. Therefore, I got rid of approx 10 small images that was used twice. I saved the file (again, save as) and even now - when I have deleted this slide, and can see in the media bank that there are less images in there, the file size remains 207 mb.

Doesn't make any sense to me.

3 years ago04/07/21 at 2:24 pm (UTC)

This post was removed by the author

Flynn Schulstad

3 years ago04/09/21 at 1:00 am (UTC)

Hi DOMETIC Academy one option is to duplicate the slide that had the overly large image on it and then delete the original file. The idea being it only duplicates the smaller image and then you can delete the original slide that for whatever reason is using so much space. if that does not work try doing the same with the whole scene

almost 3 years ago07/05/21 at 5:51 am (UTC)

If (like DOMETIC Academy) you're trying to reduce the size of their Storyline file, I suggest these 3 steps, which have worked reliably for me:

Just in case, check for and remove any unused screen recordings: On the ribbon, choose Slides then bottom ½ of Record Screen button then Delete Unused Recordings. (They can be left over from literally years ago, especially if someone has used Save As to derive your project or template from an earlier one.) Regardless of whether you find any, continue to step 2...
Move your file to your local hard drive. (I was sceptical of this often-heard advice, but in this case it seems essential for the file to actually shrink.)
Open your locally-stored file and save it twice. (In my case it didn't matter whether I chose Save or Save As, it's doing it twice that seems to make the difference. I prefer Save over Save As, so you don't end up with multiple copies of your file everywhere.)

I hope that works for you, as it has for me – multiple times. (Often it's reduced the file size by over 90%. In one case, it shrank the Storyline file from 250 MB to literally just a couple of meg!)