Storyline Files Deleted... HELP!

Hi Ryan and welcome to Heroes!

I'm so sorry to hear about your lost work. Storyline doesn't have an auto save or auto recover feature, and I can't speak to how external widgets would work with saving Storyline. You'll want to ensure you are saving to a local drive and a short file path as described here though as working off a network drive or USB could cause loss of resources.

If you're able to recover some of the .story files and elements, you can try importing them into the existing course following these directions.

Thanks, Ashley.

I think that it must just be a weird computer issue, because this isn't the first time this has happened. I do save regularly (every 5-8 minutes), and while I usually back up to Dropbox on a daily basis, all of my working files are stored locally. I made the mistake of working from a network location early on in my Storyline journey.

I used a drive recovery tool to recover the project assets-- XML files, JPEG and PNG images, etc., but when I opened the .story file that is saved on my Desktop, it seemed to revert to a version of the project that was saved about 36 hours before the computer crashed. What's interesting is that everything IN the project was saved, but was somehow disassociated with the .story file that held it all together. I have absolutely no idea how this happened.

That being said, I am a Mac guy to my core, and Storyline is the first product that I've ever used that inspired me to buy a PC to run it. It is that good! My Mac makes versioned backups every hour so that if this sort of issue occurred, I could set my computer to how it was an hour before the issue, and not worry about data loss. Do you know of any similar solutions for the PC? Of course, I would LOVE to see Storyline develop a Mac Version, but I know that's not happening in the immediate future. Issues like this, while not the fault of Storyline are expensive and annoying, and I would do anything necessary to prevent them from happening again.

No help for your issue, but you can work directly from a dropbox saved file

Hi Ryan,

I certainly understand the need/desire for a Mac version, and it's something a number of users have submitted feature requests regarding. You can also run Storyline from a VM such as Parallels within your Mac, and although it's not the native Mac environment, I've heard a few users say that they enjoy it as it's the fastest Windows machine they've ever used.

I don't know of any specific back up methods that we would suggest or endorse, although I know Tom Kuhlmann has discussed back up options in a previous blog post. I hope that if there are some other community members who have experience with a particular back up method they'll be able to share those with you here.

Hi Ashley and Ryan,

Just wanted to say that I've been using SyncToy for quite some time after reading about it in Tom K's blog. It's great for synchronizing work between my desktop and my laptop...but it would also work simply as a backup tool...backing up to a separate hard drive or location.

Hi Ryan,

you may have tried this already but just in case:

Start->Accessories->System Tools->System Restore

Also try this:

Switch on the laptop and immediately keep hitting F8 until you see the "Advance Boot Options" window then choose "Last Known Good Configuration"

Hope that helps and good luck!!!

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. I have been looking into getting a better backup solution than my current USB 3.0 external drive, so regardless of the continued frustration, I shouldn't be "up a creek" the next time this happens.

Oscar, the next time this happens, I will definitely try your suggestion. I ended up sacrificing hours of sleep to rebuild the file to the point it was prior to my crash. It's done now, thank goodness, but not before my computer crashed again. Thankfully, I had been making hourly backups to dropbox, and was able to recover a known good copy and give my computer a good "talking to". I've got 4GB of RAM on an Asus Vivobook-- any suggestions on an optimal system to run Storyline without a hiccup? I'm willing to spend a little money if necessary to improve my overall workflow and experience.

I love this forum!

Ryan, the single most effective upgrade to any system, especially laptops, is to upgrade the mechanical hard drive for a SSD one. SSD hard drives are much faster, lighter, less power hungry=less heat, no noise, no vibrations and are by far more reliable than mechanical ones, also right now are very affordable. You could get a Crucial MX100 512GB for about £150 and if money is no object get a Synology DiskStation DS214 to create your own NAS box for backing up files and also as a media server.

Also make sure windows is up to date, along with all your drivers, I use Driver Detective software.

Hope that helps and good luck

Ryan, I just had the same problem, and I use a Time Machine backup system on my MacBook Pro that backs files up every hour. Even so, I lost approximately 36 hours of time on the file. This has never happened to me before, and I wonder if there is a bug in Storyline 2. I lost an enormous amount of work on a project with a tight deadline. I'm really scrambling now.

I finally found the file in a folder labeled "recovered files" in the trash. I have never had that experience before, but thank goodness! Eternally grateful that I have lost 20 minutes rather than 36 hours. Backtracking, I think that the enormous amount temporary files building up in the appdata/articulate/storyline folder caused critical memory failure and therefore a crash during my last save. 

Hi Wendy,

We're aware of an issue where the temp files created are causing difficulty with saving, but not the crash or lost completely as you mentioned. Although with that in mind, I did want to share the directions on how to empty your temp directory per this KB article on the issue:

1. Open Windows Explorer, type %temp% in the address field, and press Enter.
2. When your temp directory opens, press Ctrl+A to select all the temp files, then press the Delete key on your keyboard.
3. A few temp files may currently be in use that can't be deleted. When prompted, you can skip those.
4. You can now save your project file.

We're working to improve the way temp files are handled so this issue won't occur. In the meantime, you'll need to empty your temp directory if you find that you can't save your project file.

The best thing you can do is to find an effective data recovery software to look back the lost data on the formatted hard drive. And in this situation this tool can help you a lot https://www.pandorarecovery.com/flash-drive-data-recovery.html . Just follow the link and check the little tutorul what to do next.

Hope it helps!