Storyline keeps changing my slide order

Jun 08, 2021

I have been working in a project for a few weeks and just noticed at some point Storyline360 changed my slide order. See in the attached image that slide 1.12 and 1.13 are not sequential. Initially I tried to drag and drop the slides back in order But these slides won't drop into any place other than where they are. I then tried a back door technique of cutting the slides and then pasting them back in their proper place - this worked for a day but then after deleting a slide much further up stream slides 1.12 and 1.,13 went right back to the order in the screenshot. I have also tried resetting slide order from within the player menu. This also works most of the time, but any change anywhere else in the project puts the slides back out of order. There are no hard links on any of these slides (they only have jump to prev and next) the only hard path is they all come from a main menu slide (slide 1.10) and all have a return to main menu button.

My biggest negative memory of Storyline 1 was slide numbering and order (i.e. issues just like this) and now in 360 I am seeing the same issues. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

33 Replies
Teacher NotHR

I should also add there appears to be a chaotic relationship with the slide order in storyview and the player. For example, the screen shot in the previous post shows slides out of order BUT at this same time the player menu is correct (see attached image). But this can and will change at any time, you don't even need the program to be open, if at dinner tonight you have even a moments thought of changing any slide in the project (or any slide in any project in the whole world) - it will change my slides into random sequences. it is very possible it has already changed while I am typing this post :)

Becca Levan

Hi Teacher, and welcome to E-Learning Heroes! ⭐️

I appreciate you sharing these details; it sounds like you've already tried quite a few troubleshooting steps to remedy this!

From here, I'd like our support engineers to step in and help investigate this with you. I've created a case on your behalf, and you should've received an email from me with a case number. Stay tuned, and someone from my team will reach out with the next step!

Becca Levan

Hello Iris, and thanks for following up!

I see one of my teammates is digging into Teacher's file, so at the moment, I don't have a resolution to share. 

 I've gone ahead and opened a case on your behalf, so you should've received an email with a private upload link. If you're comfortable, please feel free to share your file with that link, and someone from my team would be happy to lend a hand!

Judy Nollet

Looking at the image made me wonder if the Storyline is displaying the slides based on the order of the buttons that link to them. This might be their order on the timeline, or perhaps the order in which they were created. SL might interpret that as the desired "order" for showing the slides that are all linked to slide 1.10. (The Articulate engineers should be able to address that.)

It can be frustrating to see slides seemingly out of order like that in Story View. But as long as the triggers are set up properly, it doesn't actually impact how the course plays. 

Iris Schlabitz

Hi,

@Becca: thanks so much, Yes I tried repair, but it did not make any change. I uploaded the file to the ticket you opened.

@Judy: I also thought so in another storyline, as this seemed true. But now I have one that is scrambled although and not according to the linked buttons order.

So there must be something else I have been missing.

Judy Nollet

Hi, Sherry,

The Player's Reset from Story button will rebuild the menu based on the current arrangement in the .story file. 

You can then use the trash button to delete any items you don't want in the menu. And you can use the arrow buttons if you do want to re-arrange the menu.

There's more info here:

https://community.articulate.com/series/articulate-storyline-360/articles/articulate-storyline-360-user-guide-how-to-customize-the-menu 

Emily Egerer

I am having a similar issue as stated above. When adding a new slide, previous ones are re-numbered causing the flow to mess up. It is mainly happening on "quiz slides". Attached is an example of what is going on.

Slide "1.5" used to be 1.15 but when I made a content change (added a screenshot to the slide) it updated the overall slide flow.  I am having to add extra triggers to ensure the flow is correct. Any ideas on why this is happening?

Lauren Connelly

Hello Emily!

I'm happy to help! If you have branching in your course, you'll see that the slides underneath the branching will also be included when dragging slides to another place in the Slide Order. This can cause the slide numbers to not update after dragging if there is already a trigger to jump to a specific slide.

I'm happy to take a look at your project to determine the best approach. You can either attach it to this public discussion or share it privately in a support case.

Jeff Parker - Mariner Partners, Inc.

Good to see this post. I found this post by searching "storyline why my slides suddenly go out of place" and am somewhat relieved it's not just me. 

Similarly, screens will seemingly resort themselves. But it's not random.

I haven't figured out what I'm "doing wrong" yet, but I am convinced the resort or displaced slide is a consequence of a misunderstanding between me and Articulate 360.

Articulate 360 is not just selecting a random slide and placing it somewhere else in the scene.  The problem seems to originate more from a slide I had been working on a few minutes ago, or maybe a slide that was last highlighted or selected. But the consequence sure is annoying. If I could just figure out what clicks and actions bring on the resort, I'd be that much more smitten with Articulate. Instead, I'm feeling on guard, watching over my scene, trying not to overcomplicate things so I can't spot a resort too late.

Anyone feel the same way?

Walt Hamilton

Part of the problem is that when slide order is changed, the order of the thumbnails is not changed until the next time they are redrawn. So the changing of the order of the slides, and your observing the results of that action can be widely separated.

I have found that when I click on a slide thumbnail in the Story View that if the mouse makes even the slightest twitch during the click, it will modify the slide order, even if I don't see it. After what seems like years of wasted time spent trying to find where slides are and how they got moved, I have determined it is a vast saving of time to create every "jump to ..." trigger using the slide name, rather than "Next". That prevents the slides from ever changing sequence. They may change numbers, but not order. A simple drag will change their numbers back.

Like Judy says, the menu is congruent with the actual order only occasionally, and that right after you follow her suggestion to rearrange it. Again, "Jump to [slide name]" can help that problem, too.

Linda Harris

Hi all, is there a fix for this? I had to scrap a project for this same reason. I thought I was loosing my mind. I started over and it seems to work but NOW I'm having the same problem. I'm at that end of my project and a hard deadline to launch it and this happens! I can't afford this time wise. 

What is the solution?

Sara Carpenter

Is there a resolution for this issue?  I have a very large project and Storyline is randomly reordering the slides. I am losing confidence. How will I know if it has reordered - before publishing. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Storyline. I have repeatedly unbranched, reordered, and re-branched my slides. I have renamed to avoid confusion. 

Please provide guidance.

Walt Hamilton

The first thing to check is that the slides actually have changed positions, and not just moved around in the story view pane. The true order is the way your learners view them when published (or your view in preview). What you see in the story view pane is not related to the actual order.

I have found that when I click on a slide thumbnail in the Story View that if the mouse makes even the slightest twitch during the click, it will modify the slide order, even if I don't see it. Changing one trigger can drastically affect the story view. Sometimes you make a change, and it takes a while for the story view to redraw the thumbnails.

After what seems like years of wasted time spent trying to find where slides are and how they got moved, I have determined it is a vast saving of time to create every "jump to ..." trigger using the slide name, rather than "Next". That prevents the slides from ever changing sequence. They may change numbers, but not order. A simple drag will change their numbers back.

Angela Destro

I too am having this issue, and I cannot believe there is no fix yet!! At times, in a project with a lot of branching and scenes, I don't even notice that slides in a completely unrelated branch of the scene randomly jump to a new position.

This is very embarrassing when you submit a file for review to your team, or worse to the client, and find that the last minor change you made moved the slides around and you didn't notice. So the client or your supervisor sees an incorrect/non-functioning slide order. Imagine what they think about my skillset!

I have started undocking the scene for slides I am working on so that I can see (in my peripheral vision) if something changes on a different slide. I have caught these random slide order moves MANY TIMES by doing this, but it is not a solution to the problem. 

Is there any update on this issue??

Jose Tansengco

Hi Angela,

I'm sorry to hear that you ran into this issue. 

I'm aware that incorporating a branching design in Storyline 360 rearranges the order and position of the slides, but I'm not aware of any issues wherein this rearrangement causes slides to become non-functioning. Even though a slide is moved to a different position in Story view, any triggers linked to that slide should still work. 

Would you be willing to share a copy of your project file here or in private by opening a support case so we can take a closer look at what's happening? Please include a short description of which slide is non functioning properly. We'll delete it when we're done testing!

 

Angela Destro

Unfortunately, I would have to create a screen capture video, but I am not allowed to because of corporate policy. The video would be needed for you to actually see that the program is orphaning and / or changing slides. This happens both within a scene I am working on, and across scenes as well, even in completely different branches of the project. This is not a specific slide causing the problem. But it happened again today. I was working on triggers in scene 5 and things got changed in scene 4. You can see a slight flash of the screen when it happens, but until you go over to the other branches / scenes and dig into them, you have no idea what happened.

Jose Tansengco

Hi Angela, 

Thanks for providing us with a detailed description of the behavior you're experiencing. 

If you're already working locally when making changes to your project file, try doing a repair of your Storyline 360 installation to see if this helps. Doing the repair will help ensure that you are working using a healthy installation of the application. 

If the issue persists, open a case with our support team here to get in touch with our support team. They are equipped to troubleshoot issues that contain proprietary information, and will be in a better position to investigate the matter with you.