Text size and text alignment problem.
Oct 17, 2014
I've been a long time user of Articulate Studio (since 2007) and I just started using Storyline and it's so infuriatingly frustrating to use. I'm an old hand at all kinds of publishing software, and let me tell you, the text boxes in Storyline are nuts. When I click inside an existing text box, the text size changes and the text box size and alignment changes. Just by clicking inside it to edit. Then I have to click out of the box and it changes again (both text size and box size), then I click inside the box again and finally it settles down enough for me to move it into alignment with other things on the slide or layer. Then if I click inside that text box again to edit it.. it starts all over.
This is maddening enough, but now I've run into another similar problem. When I add a graded question slide that has answer choices that are long and that wrap around, to prevent the scroll bar for the answer choices (which I would NEVER use, a scroll bar for answer choices? Really?) I have to mess around with the text size and shift the spacing between the answer choices to get it all to fit nicely on the slide. I deal with all the problems mentioned in the above paragraph, but eventually get it to look right. But then when I publish, the answer choices are all messed up, some of them overlapping others, some of them off the bottom of the page, and there's nothing that can be done to fix it. No amount of wrestling with the text boxes in the editing mode will make them properly aligned in published view.
Am I the only one having these problems? How do I deal with it? And don't tell me to use a scroll bar on answer choices, that's just asking for a thousand calls and emails from students who can't find the right answer cause they didn't notice the scroll bar.
Help
9 Replies
Hi Caelyn,
the text editing weirdness has been fixed in Storyline 2, but as far as answer choice text editing, I'm kinda having a similar issue. Tagging on to your issue, mine is with sequence questions. I got them to look right in edit mode, but upon publish, for some reason the font size went WAY smaller... don't know why. Hoping an articulate guru or staff member will join in (probably Monday) and help us out
Thanks!
Meg
FYI - tried increasing font size (for readability at publish) & this is the comparison:
original publish:
Edit mode, increasing from 14pt to 18pt (I would never choose to wrap one word, but for argument's sake, trying to get it to be readable upon publish):
no idea why the one choice looks like a bigger font size, I tried all possible ways to change it & program insists all 3 are 18pt, all the same font & style.
preview after the above font size increase:
at least now it's readable - my guess is just test with preview until it looks right... for now. hopefully this would be fixed in a "bug fix" update in future
Howdy,
Caelyn, to answer this part of your post:
"When I click inside an existing text box, the text size changes and the text box size and alignment changes. Just by clicking inside it to edit. Then I have to click out of the box and it changes again (both text size and box size), then I click inside the box again and finally it settles down enough for me to move it into alignment with other things on the slide or layer. Then if I click inside that text box again to edit it.. it starts all over"
If you work at 100% zoom level in SL1 this won't happen. I know it's not ideal - but that's the workaround. This is no longer necessary in SL2.
Meg and Caelyn, I can't speak to the other issues, but I think in order for the community or staff to attempt to assist you, it would be helpful if you're able to upload the slide(s) in question. If they're proprietary, perhaps you could replace proprietary info with generic info?
Hi all, thanks for your replies. I have verified that if I work at 100 percent zoom, (I had been working at 150) my layout and text size problems go away. Thanks
I have also figured out my problem with the formatting of the answer choices. I was formatting my answer choice layouts based on the relative height of each answer choice's number of rows of text. Each choice may been 3 rows, 2 rows, 1 row etc. To get them all to fit and still be readable took some re-formatting of the automatic layout. Well if you also have the question set to randomize answers, it doesn't re-order the text boxes of the answers, only the text. So it would shift a 3 row answer into the text box for a 1 row answer and vice versa, messing the layout up, but ONLY after preview or publish. The only way I could make it work was to not randomize answers on questions with long choices that word wrap.
Hi Caelyn! Glad that you were able to get this sorted and thanks for sharing your solution
Hi Rebecca - I can do that :)
Attached is a story file of just the sequence questions. I replaced text with "lorem ipsum" text - same number of words. I also changed ALL the answer choice text to 18pt font size - you'll see on some of them, answers look different within one slide. And the font size just seems not to actually update accurately, at least in edit mode - upon preview/publish they seem to be rendered all at the same size at least, but smaller than expected (as compared to regular text boxes/captions).
Thanks!
Meg
Meg:
I think it is related to your settings in the text/autofit section of the shape. If you right click on answer shapes and choose format shape, you can then select the text box section. You will have to change each set of text independently and I noticed that I sometimes had to click "Do not autofit" more than once to get it to hold, but once I did that, all of the text kept the size I intended on a change.
Hope this helps.
Tx, Brent, for responding. Hoping you're now good to go, Meg. If not, please shout out.
thanks Brent & Rebecca :) I will check it out and report back :)
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