Forum Discussion
All images disappeared
Hello,
This morning when I was working on my storyline file, all of a sudden the images disappeared.
The strange thing is that I can still see them in the thumbnails, but when I go to the actual slide they no longer appear.
Stranger still, they still to have been remplaced by a transparent image, because I can still click on them ...
This is extremely problematic because I either have to re-insert all my images, or go back to a previous version of my file and re-do all the work that has been done in the mean time.
I have attached a sample of my Storyline file.
Has this ever happened to anyone? Do you know how to resolve this issue?
Thanks!
Allison
58 Replies
Thanks Nigel and I looked into your case as well. I see that Miker shared some steps on how to find an earlier version of your file in the temp files, since it sounds that there was an element of corruption within your file.
You'll want to make sure that you're working on a local drive within your laptop, not an network, shared or USB drive.
This just happened to me today. The image is visible on the Story view but not the slide view. When I preview the file, it all works as it should. It's just annoying to be working "blind" with my slide layout.
Hi Darlene,
Are you using Storyline 1 or Storyline 2? We had a number of users in Storyline 1 who were seeing this behavior and it is connected with file corruption - but I've seen limited instances of it in Storyline 2. If you are using Storyline 2, we'd like to take a look at the .story file. Can you connect with our Support engineers here to share it?
Ashley,
I've got an instance of it with Storyline 2. We're up against a tight timeline so rebuilding from scratch isn't an option. With those cases that you have seen with Storyline 2, what was the best/most successful option for making sure the file doesn't continue to corrupt or hide images from us?
Thanks :)
Hi Tiffany,
Sorry to hear you've run into this issue - and I know you mentioned being on a tight timeline, but I'd also like to have our team take a look at it. Can you send it along to us here?
Filecorruption is unpredictable, and there's no straightforward way to determine what causes it. Common causes are environmental (disk errors, power outages, improper shutdowns), viruses, failed Windows updates, and even file size (i.e., very large files have a higher risk of corrupting).Consider these preventative measures to protect your project files:1) Save and publish projects on your local hard drive. Working on a network drive or external USB drive can cause erratic behavior due to latency.2) Save incrementally. If your app has an AutoRecovery feature, take advantage of it. If not, save a new version of your project every hour or so with a new file name each time. If a file becomes corrupt, you'll still have a working version available.3) Install Dropbox. Snapshots of changes in your local Dropbox folder are kept for 30 days. If a file is damaged or deleted, you can restore a previous snapshot: https://www.dropbox.com/help/11/en.4) Don't leave the app open and unattended for long periods of time. Some users have reported file corruption after leaving their apps open overnight. It's possible that a malware scan or disk backup could run because the machine is idle, making your app vulnerable to crashing.As far as preventing file corruption, the general guidelines here are worth confirming that you're working within.
There may still be a working version of your project in your temp files. Here's how to check:
1) Open this folder in Windows Explorer:%appdata%\Articulate\Storyline2) Scan the contents of this folder for a file that starts with the name of your project. If you find one, copy it to your desktop. If you find more than one, copy the latest version to your desktop.3) Change the file extension of the copy on your desktop from *.tmp to *.story.4) Double-click the file to open it in Storyline.Quick fix. Copy all slides on new scene from different storyline file. Don't copy the entire scene, just the slides into a new scene,
Thanks Wayne for sharing that idea here as well, and I'm happy to hear that solution worked for you!
On the working locally point - I save my storyline files locally but do access assets on a network drive. Should I copy the assets to my local drive before inserting, too?
Hi Christina,
I would also look at using local assets as linking to them from the network drive could cause similar issues based on latency and if the assets were moved within the network. Have you run into a specific problem with your course? If so, we'll be happy to take a look at the .story file and just let us know what is going wrong with it so that we can dig in a bit deeper.
Thanks, @Ashley. I have a pretty image heavy course of 50 slides with multiple layers and it corrupted as originally described in this thread. Importing didn't do the trick this time. I've now moved my assets to my local drive and reinserted them into the course from there so hopefully that will mitigate the risk of it happening again somewhat. I'm still using SL1 - has this bug been seen in Storyline 360 at all?
