Storyline freezes after inserting (typing, pasting or importing) and selecting text containing an ampersand

Mar 24, 2022

This apparently intermittent issue that I first encountered several months ago has become quite critical as I am now working on psychology material that must be referenced in the APA style – which requires an ampersand to be placed between the names of the last and second to last authors.

The text below, for example, will crash Storyline when pasted into a textbox and selected (but not necessarily every time...):

–Golan, D. E., Tashjian, A. H., & Armstrong, E. J. (Eds.). (2011). Principles of pharmacology: the pathophysiologic basis of drug therapy. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

The American Psychological Association would be less than happy if I replaced the first '&' with 'and'.

Anyone else seen this? 

Any way to fix this?

Thank you.

Malcolm

2 Replies
Andrea Koehntop

Hello Malcolm! I apologize for the issue you are experiencing when trying to use the ampersand in Storyline. I can see how this would be frustrating.

I tried this on my end, and adding an ampersand to a text box worked as expected.

Since I couldn’t reproduce this issue, let me ask you a few questions to begin troubleshooting:

  • Are you working from a local hard drive? We don't recommend working with files on a network drive.
  • Is this issue isolated to one project, or every .story file where you attempt to use "&"?
  • Have you attempted a repair of Storyline 360? Here are the instructions.

If none of these steps solves your issue, I'd like you to open a case with one of our Support Engineers.

Malcolm Creen

Hi Andrea,

The problem has only occurred once since I contacted you – this morning, in exactly the same way:

Insert text containing an ampersand in a text box.
Select the text containing the ampersand.
Storyline freezes.

For your information:
I work on story files from my hard disk.
The problem has occurred in multiple projects – but not all...

I will attempt a repair when I get the chance and let you know if anything changes.

Thank you.

Malcolm