Anyone else always having to go to the end and shorten timeline?

Hi Meryem - Eric's right, you can just drag past the left boundary and the scrolling will keep going automatically (you don't need to release). Another thing that can help is to change the zoom setting on the timeline so that you can get more of a birds-eye view of the timeline - that way you can see the entire timeline all at once without having to scroll. Here's a quick screencast showing both these tips: 

Thanks, Jeanette and Eric.  Just keep dragging... It works!

Jeanette, I notice that my timeline can show forty-something seconds at lowest zoom, and that is if I reduce the sidebar width to get more space.  Am I correct that it is not possible to reduce the zoom to see the entirety of the timeline on longer slides?  Many of mine have audio that is 1-3 minutes, and it doesn't seem possible to see the entire timeline at once.  This isn't a big issue, but I just want to be sure that I'm not missing a trick to "View All" on the timeline.

Actually to some extent I believe it depends on your monitor size. I have a 24-inch monitor and if I completely collapse my thumbnail pane at the left, and also collapse my triggers/slide layers pane at the right, i can view up to about 107 seconds on my timeline:

This is an old thread - but it seems to be a current issue. It's not just when I import things either. I've noticed that objects that are not set to "show until end" will push the timeline out if you align them with a cue point and the time from the cue point to the current end of timeline is less than the duration set for the object. I found it helps a bit if you leave everything set to "show until end" and align to cue points, then (for objects you need to have disappear, go back, reset them to NOT show until end, and then adjust the duration appropriately. It would be very nice to have an "adjust to cue point" option for the END of an object's timeline as well as the beginning (feature request anyone? :).

That being said, I am ALSO finding that sometimes the timeline moves out and I have everything set to "show until end," I have not yet found rhyme or reason for this, but it IS annoying to constantly have to readjust the timeline. And sometimes it has been padded by a lot. My record so far was 415 seconds for a page with 15 seconds of audio. I'll keep looking for a pattern - but if anyone has any ideas...

OK, I just hit an odd one. The element was a text box. It was set to start at time stamp 46s, show until end of slide, and used "float in" to animate in (1 sec). The slide/page timeline ended at the end of the audio (49.5 seconds and some change).

I right clicked on the text box item (on the timeline) and aligned it to Cue Point 8 (which was at time stamp 37.75). When I did so, the text box was aligned to the Cue Point, but Storyline 2 ALSO added 8.5 seconds to the end of the timeline, pushing it out to 58 seconds. A little quick math showed a pattern: In order to come back to Cue Point 8, the object needed to have 8.5 seconds added to its duration. That's EXACTLY the amount of time that was added to the overall timeline.

Furthermore, the phenomenon is repeatable. When I adjusted a second item to a cue point, this time moving it back 7 seconds, Storyline padded the over timeline by exactly that much.

Sounds like a bug. There's a system variable being adjusted that shouldn't be.

Hi Michel!

You may find that aligning objects to cue points unexpectedly lengthens the timeline when those objects are set to Show Until End. This issue was fixed in Update 5 for Articulate Storyline. See this article for more information.

I am using the latest release of Storyline 2, and the problem appears to still be present. 

If you'd like our team to take a look at your .story file, you are welcome to share here.

I know our team is aware of an on-going issue, but the workaround is the same as what you mentioned finding above:

I found it helps a bit if you leave everything set to "show until end" and align to cue points

Workaround:
Instead of using align to playhead, insert a cue point and align to cue point - be sure you've enabled "show until end" as a part of the object status on the timeline

I've submitted the file with an explanation. Just so you know, I am using "align to cue point" and "show until end" is enabled. The problem is that if you adjust an object to a cue point BEFORE where it currently sits on the timeline, Story line moves it back to the requested point, and then arbitrarily pads the timelines with whatever number of seconds it moved the object back. So if the object was aligned to time 10 secs, and the entire timeline ends at 30 seconds, if you align it to a cue point at time 5 secs, the object is moved back by 5 seconds and the timeline is now 35 seconds long (original 30 plus 5). This is apparently how I got to over 400 seconds. I had a slide where I substantially shortened the audio, and when I adjusted all of the cue points and then aligned the objects, it padded the timeline for each and every adjustment.

Thanks Michel! I see where you submitted your case (00625262) and you should be hearing from someone soon :)