Storyline Save Error

Mar 26, 2013

Stephanie Schneider
By Stephanie Schneider

Been working on a project all day and just lost the majority of it after I published it.

I need to be able to work on the files and am not sure how to resurrect them from the Zip file that I was able to create through the publish option. Is there anyway I can restore what I lost from the zip file? I also emailed the project to a collaborator and the instructions sent on the email walk through several steps and then the last one is to open the story.html file, but there isn't a story.html file in the zip folder that was attached to the email. Please please please tell me that I don't have to recreate this one. The error occurred after I published and then clicked save. I got an error message saying that there was a problem with Articulate and it needed to close. I had no other option but to close and then lost about 5 hours of work. 

I was able to publish it to my LMS but I need to be able to edit the work. Please help. 

3 Replies
Stephanie Schneider
11 years ago03/26/13 at 6:09 pm (UTC)

Yes, that's right it's just the published files in the zip folder. Anyone else having a similar problem where SL will let you publish you finished project but then when you go to save it it gives you a message that says, "Articulate has encountered an error and needs to close" and then you lose everything? Also, when I click save, my work does not save unless I close out of it after I save so this makes saving as I go very time consuming. Saving is a very foundational feature. If I can't count on save, how can I convince my company to purchase more licenses?

Christine Hendrickson
11 years ago03/27/13 at 8:14 am (UTC)

Hi Stephanie,

That doesn't sound like expected behavior, at all. My first concern is that the files aren't saving. Please try to make sure that you're modifying, saving and publishing from local project files.

  • 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.

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

Does this happen with every course you work with, or one specific course? If you can, please try to create a new, blank Storyline course. Are you able to save that course? If so, you can try importing the slides from your original project (the one that will not save) into a new project. If you're not sure how to go about doing this, just take a look at the following tutorial:

Importing from Another Storyline Project

If you still experience the crashing, or cannot get your files to save, please try following the steps in the article below:

Articulate Support - How to repair Articulate Storyline

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.