Translation Import hoses hyperlinks/triggers

Sep 11, 2018

I'm working on a course that has (unfortunately) lots of linked  text with triggers mostly that jump to a SharePoint page or file, send an email or jump to another slide. Hyperlinks in general are unstable/temperamental as it is in SL2 and apparently translation imports are yet another reason why I dislike them so much. After importing a French translation, I found all my links were broken/inactive. I've not used translation with a course with many links before. When asking a colleague who's worked on these courses before, she said "you'll have to reset all your links and often hotspots too". I meant to ask more about the hotspot issue, I was thinking trigger issues but maybe she meant their position which is important given translation changes your character count typically, but that's a different issue.

One issue was a trigger was missing altogether (though this might be from another annoying bug when you paste slides, link triggers usually won't work). In most cases, the other linked text triggers were present, and most of those still display the "link text" within the trigger (ex: "...do this when user clicks "link text" in text box 2"), though in at least one case the linked text is blank now in the trigger (... do this when user clicks "" in text box 2). This course sticks with the default formatting of links in blue underline, and the formatting is still there to fool you, but several things tell you is inative: in preview, hovering over shows no feedback, nothing happens when clicked. Click or highlight the link text and opening the trigger wizard shows no action, no text-- the link's simply gone though the trigger still appears in the trigger panel. Is this a known bug that was never repaired? We're supposed to be upgrading to 360 soon, does this issue persist still?

13 Replies
Leslie McKerchie

Hi Chris,

In Storyline 2, the issue is not specific to a translation type from what I'm seeing, but the first hyperlink in a text box does not work is what we have reported.

For Storyline 360, the issue is that all hyperlinks do not work after importing from Word.

I hope that clarifies what Ashley shared above.

If you see something different, please feel free to share your .story file with our team here.

Chris Roetzer

Hi Leslie, thank you for that information, I think what you’re saying is with storyline 2, it’s regardless of whether it’s Word or XLIFF. I’m not entirely clear of your point about the first link only? In my course it’s all hyperlinked/triggered text. I can’t really share the source file, it’s confidential to our company, but you could probably replicated simply by creating a few text boxes, add maybe a half dozen rows of text and create hyperlinks such as to lightbox another slide or jump to an external webpage. Try a Word export/import and see if it makes them all not work. I think you’ll find that the triggers still appear in the trigger panel but nothing happens when you hover over them in preview and if you right click to edit the hyperlink the only option is simply ‘hyperlink’ which would be to establish one. We have found in all cases you have to delete the triggers and re-establish for all hyperlinked text.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Chris,

I tested again in Storyline 2 Update 13, and what I saw matches Leslie's explanation. If you have multiple hyperlinks in one text box, only one of them stops working after importing in the translation. The others are working normally for me. 

Also, in Storyline 2, this happens regardless of the translation method whereas with Storyline 360 it's only on the Word translations.

We'll keep you posted on the issue here to share any updates! 

Katie Riggio

Hi there, Terry!

It sounds like you may be experiencing one of the mentioned bugs:

  • Storyline 360: Hyperlinks no longer work after importing a Word document for translation.
    • Status: We couldn't recreate this behavior in Update 33. If you see this on a newer update, please let us know and we'll work on the next steps!
  • Storyline 2: Translation import breaks the first hyperlink in a textbox.
    • Status: This problem is unique to Storyline 2, where we are not releasing any bug fixes for Storyline 2 at this time. We'll update this discussion if our plans change, though!

Let me know! I want to make sure we got you covered.

Vincent Scoma

Hi Nadia,

Oh no! I am sorry that you are running into this snag. A couple of questions for you on this:

  • May I ask what version of Storyline you are using? 
  • Could I have you share a screen recording of the issue? 

This will help us determine what the best next steps are! Please let us know if you have any questions! 

Debs Churcher

Hi, is there any update on this issue please?  I am using 360 and importing a Word doc with many links and all of them are removed.  When I try to add them back in, the 'hyperlink' option only appears if the word is in English. Unfortunately I am unable to download the Peek software on my work laptop to show you the issue, but it sounds like this is an issue which has been happening for many years so I am hoping there is an update by now?  Many thanks

Lauren Connelly

Hello Debs!

I'm happy to help! I've tested this on my end, and I'm noticing the same when linking text in Word. However, when I link text in Storyline 360, export the translation, and import the translation back to Storyline 360, the link stays.

I am noticing that when linking text in Word, it doesn't carry over into Storyline 360. Do you see this as well? I'm using Storyline 360 (Build 3.49.24347.0). 

I appreciate your help in troubleshooting this issue!

Matthew Dollinger

   I was hoping there was an update regarding this issue. We are translating Storyline files, Current version is 3.63, and seeing triggers change, or even new ones getting added after importing the translations.

   I am working to determine if the previous work was imported using Word or xliff files, but we are seeing evidence that this has happened on multiple versions of Storyline (client just never noted to us that issues existed until now).

Thank you!

Matthew

Andrea Koehntop

Hi Matthew, and welcome to the E-Learning Heroes community! ✨

I apologize for the issues you are experiencing with triggers changing after importing translations in your Storyline courses. 

Could one of our support engineers look at an example of one of your .story files where this is happening? You can open a support case with us here. We will delete any files from our systems when troubleshooting is complete.