Storyline not publishing to Word correctly

Hi Claudia and welcome to E-Learning Heroes!

Since this has worked for you in the past, I'm curious if there's been any changes to the machine or how you're working with your project files. 

First, please make sure that you're working with a local project file when you modify or publish your project. If you're working on a network drive, or any other external storage, that might be causing the trouble. 

• Work on your local drive (your C: drive). Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, including file corruption, loss of audio, and other unexpected behavior. 
• You should also make sure the directory path to your project files and your published output is less than 260 characters (for example C:\Articulate).
• Avoid using special characters, accents or symbols in your file names (this includes spaces and underscores).

Additional information regarding "Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces" in Windows operating systems can be found in the following Microsoft article.

Please make sure you're running the most recent version of Storyline. Articulate Storyline Update 5 includes bug fixes, performance improvements, and HTML5 output enhancements. Click here for details.

If you're already working locally with your Storyline project files and you've updated, it may help to run a quick repair:

Articulate Support - How to Repair Articulate Storyline

If you're still having trouble, can you tell us what version of Word/Office and Windows you have installed?

Also, are you seeing this in a specific project or does this happen with a new project file? If this only happens when you publish to Word for a specific project file, can you please share the .STORY file here, so I can take a look?

Thanks!

Hello Christine,

Thanks for responding so quickly!

 I am working on my hard drive- and this is happening with all my project files, including ones I've printed before. I tried the repair procedure, and it ran OK - but no luck with printing to Word. The courses seem to load to the LMS and run OK - it's just printing to Word that's suddenly an issue!

We are Office 2010 and Windows Professional 7, 64 bit.

I have tried to attach a story file for you to look at here, but I don't see it - so I don't know if it actually loaded..

I'm baffled - I hope there's an easy answer to this puzzle!

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

What a great looking course! Nice job :) 

I was able to download and publish your project for Word. I'm attaching the document here.

Would you mind reviewing the document? It looks good to me, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

If the document looks good to you as well, we can eliminate the file as the cause of the problem. 

If that's the case, it might be best to try following the troubleshooting steps outlined in the following article:

Unexpected or Erratic Behavior in Articulate Storyline

If that still doesn't do the trick, I would recommend reinstalling Word/Office. If you need help with this, ask your IT team for assistance. 

Please let me know how it goes!

Christine

Hi Christine -

Sorry for the delay on my side - I was OBE (Overtaken by Events) for a while. You're printout looks perfect - and I'm glad you liked the course. I think it will be fun for our sales force.

I tried the repair for Articulate, but that didn't help. Also,  I learned that the other developer we have on staff is having the same issue, so I think you're correct that it probably has something to do with recent updates to Windows or Office.

Thanks for your help - I'll follow up with our IT folks.

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

You're very welcome. And no worries, things come up :)

If you're able to get this working, or have trouble after working with your IT department, please let me know. I'm curious as to what might be causing the issue and hopeful we can share the solution with anyone else that runs into this issue.

Thanks so much for keeping me updated.

Have a great day!

Hi Christine,

I too am experiencing the issue that Claudia has outlined. I am trying to publish to Word. The Word doc is generated, but only the first slide of my Articulate course is published. I am using Word 2013 and Articulate Storyline Update 5.

Is there a fix for this that you know of?

Thanks,

Brett

Hi Brett and welcome to the community!

I'm afraid I don't know the outcome for Claudia's situation just yet. 

However, we can take a look at what's happening for you and see if we can get it working properly. If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading through the previous posts in this thread to ensure you have everything set up properly. 

Make sure you're running locally.

Make sure you're running the 32-bit installation of a supported version of Office. 

Try the repair and advanced reinstallation steps. 

If you still have trouble, you're welcome to post the .STORY file here. I can see if I'm able to publish to Word with your project as well. If I'm able to do so, it may be something we need to look into with the set up of the machine or software. 

Thank you!

Thanks Christine,

Appreciate the response.

Yes, I'm running locally.

Yes, it's a 32 bit installation of Office

I'll try the repair and advanced installation steps today and let you know.

The trouble happens with each and every .story file, including any sample files I download from the community.

Thanks, I'll provide an update once I get IT to run the re-install.

Brett

Hi Christine,

I've created a support ticket, as it seems to be still happening, despite running the repair and a full re-install.

Thanks,

Brett

Hi Brett,

Thanks for the update!

I was able to find your support case (#00397205 for my reference) and I see that you're currently working with Jayem on the issue. 

I did take a look at both the project file and the sample Word document. I was able to successfully publish to Word with the project and all three slides displayed properly. 

Jayem will be testing your file and you should hear from him soon.

In the meantime, I'd suggest checking your current version of Storyline. Have you installed Update 5? If not, it may help to update the software and see if the publish to Word works properly. You can download Update 5 here. 

Please let us know if you see any improvement. 

Thanks, Brett!

Our genius tech support person figured it out!

Here’s what I did:

The laptop is a Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Machine:

1.       Moved the .story file to the Desktop

2.       Recreated a possible corrupt template file. (How-to link: https://player.vimeo.com/video/204929869)

3.       Reset Microsoft Word’s File Block Settings to default by doing the following:

-Open a new Microsoft Word document àFile à Options à Trust Center à Trust Center Settings… à File Block Settings à Press the Restore Defaults button (once again on the small window that pops up) à Ok.

 We are now rockin' & rollin' again.

Awesome, Claudia!

Thanks so much for sharing this update and for sharing the solution, as well.

Rock on :)

Christine

Thanks for the assistance so far Christine,

Unfortunately, still no luck on my side.

I have Storyline 5 installed and I'm working with Word 2013. I followed Claudia's instructions and still no luck.

It is definitely to do with the Notes section, because if I remove all notes, the document prints.

The moment I place a single note in my project, publishing to Word (inlcude Notes) stalls at that exact point I placed the Note.

Having trouble resolving as I can't switch off security settings or send through tracking files to Jayem.

It's a problem that remains unsolved on my side unfortunately.

Thanks,

Brett

Hi Brett,

I'm sorry to hear that!

I do see where you mentioned to Jayem that you're unable to send the log files, that's unusual, but understandable. 

I'm curious if you were able to try the latest suggestion that Jayem sent:

1. Restart your machine 
2. Disable your antivirus software 
3. Create a new Storyline project 
4. Save this on your desktop 
5. IMPORTANT: In the notes section of the slide, type in some text. Please make sure you only use letters and numbers (example: Hello World) 
6. Insert a new blank slide 
7. Repeat step 4 
8. Publish to WORD with "Show slide notes" option enabled 

Did you have any luck when using that method, or are you still seeing the same thing with the notes included? 

If you could also pass your results on to Jayem, that would help him continue troubleshooting from his end as well.

Thanks for keeping me updated, Brett!

I am having the same problems as Claudia.  I am working from my local drive, adjusted my master templates, reset words file block settings, updated to version 4 (Storyline2) and finally "repaired" Storyline2 by uninstalling and reinstalling it.  Also we have not gotten any windows or office updates.  My coworker was able to publish my course to word and is running version 3.   My other courses will not publish to word when they did previously.  Nothing seems to be working and at this point concerned it is user error.  Help...

Hi I M,

I'm using Storyline 2 Update 4 and I was also able to publish your course to Word and have attached it here for you.  You'll want to make sure that you're publishing locally and following along with the other guidelines here. 

You mentioned repairing Storyline, and I'd want to ensure you went through all the steps here. 

Of course, publishing locally and yes followed all the steps. Will try it all again for the third time...very frustrating. Is there any other new info that you can share that I can try?

Hi IM,

Since I was able to succesfully publish the file, we can say it's not file specific and something with your current install of Storyline and system set up. 

Do you receive an error messages when trying to publish or does Storyline freeze up? If Storyline is sharing an error message that may be helpful in identifying the issue. If Storyline crashes as a result of the publishing behavior, you could also pull the error logs as detailed here to share with our team in identifying this issue. 

Not getting any error messages nor crashing...just the endless load circle. My IS department is going to troubleshoot it for me again.
Thanks

Thanks IM and please keep us posted on what you're able to find out.