Linking from Storyline 2 to MS Word bookmarks

Nov 14, 2017

Hi.

I would like to place a command button in Storyline 2 that, when clicked, will open a separate MS Word document and the automatically jump to a specific place in that document. In other words, I need Storyline to jump to a bookmark in a Word document.

The reason why I need the link to an external Word document, instead of just putting the wording on a different Storyline slide, is that I want the user to copy the text the Word doc takes him to, and then use it by pasting it into an email, etc. In short, therefore, I am using Storyline to navigate the user through a range of potential scenarios, in order to provide the specific wording to use for his particular situation (where the wording for each different scenario is earmarked with its own bookmark).

When working between MS Office products, the way to create such links appears to be by adding a hashtag and then the bookmark name to the end of the url address. If one then references the url address with the # suffix in a hyperlink, the linked document opens at the exact spot of the bookmark, instead of just at the top of page one (which won't work for me, because there are hundreds of situations, and I can't expect the user to scroll through such a long document to find the right wording).

However, this "include the bookmark name in the url address" approach doesn't work in Storyline. If I add a "Jump to URL/file" trigger to my command button and then add the directory location of the doc that I want to link to, including the #bookmark name portion directly after the file name in the url address, Storyline tells me that it is an "invalid URL or file not found". If I remove the # portion, however, then it opens the linked doc, but only at the top of page one.

Is there a way to create a trigger that will jump to a specific point in a Word (or any other creatable type of) document?

Thanks.

1 Reply
David Tait

I've never been able to get this to work either. I've also tried linking to specific pages in a PDF without success too.

I'd be keen to hear if anyone else has managed to get this working.

Maybe you could add a linked contents page at the start of your Word doc that the user can use to jump to the relevant page in the document. Not as ideal as you'd like but better than endless scrolling?

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