Error in Preview and Publish

Hi George,

Have you tried repairing Storyline 3? Were there any other updates to your Windows system when this started happening? 

I am experiencing similar issues.  Running Windows 7 Enterprise.  Long time Articulate user (since Studio '09).  Upon installing SL3 I have not been able to publish or preview even a blank presentation.  This is affecting half of my team.  We have our internal IT as well as the Articulate Support team working on it and no one can figure anything out.

Those of you who had similar issues, was there anything that eventually solved your problem (or was it more of a corrupt slide/image issues.

This is the error report that is generated when the error popup comes up.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<ErrorReport xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
 <FirstName></FirstName>
 <LastName></LastName>
 <EmailAddress></EmailAddress>
 <MachineName></MachineName>
 <HardwareId></HardwareId>
 <Message>Object reference not set to an instance of an object.</Message>
 <StackTrace> at Articulate.Drawing.DirectWrite.DirectWrite.a(LocalizedStrings A_0, String A_1)
 at Articulate.Drawing.DirectWrite.DirectWrite.a(Font A_0, String A_1)
 at Articulate.Drawing.DirectWrite.DirectWrite.a(FontFamily A_0, String A_1, String A_2)
 at Articulate.Drawing.DirectWrite.DirectWrite.a[a](String A_0, FontStyle A_1, Func`6 A_2, FontCollection A_3, Nullable`1 A_4, Nullable`1 A_5)
 at Articulate.Player.PlayerText.Fonts.Save(IPlayerService service, bwContent content)
 at Articulate.Player.PlayerWriter.Write(IPlayerContentProvider contentProvider)
 at Articulate.Design.Publish.TargetContext.PublishBackgroundWorker.OnDoWork(DoWorkEventArgs e)
 at Articulate.ComponentModel.STABackgroundWorker.a(Object A_0)</StackTrace>
</ErrorReport>

Hi there, Erin.  Thanks for sharing your experience so far with the community.  It always helps when other users can find common denominators.

I saw that Victor made some recommendations to you in your support case:

...please try to remove unused/unneeded application from your machine along with registry keys that points to those applications. Then, reinstall Storyline 3 and see how it goes. I also highly recommend installing any pending Windows updates if there's any.

How did you make out with those steps?  You can let me know here, or reply back to the case.  I want to make sure that you get the support you need to get back to normal!

Just ran into this problem myself... thank you to whoever suggested importing a slide at a time to a new project. I isolated that the problem stemmed from a video - more specifically a video that I reduced the volume of using the video editor tool. When I uploaded it without reducing the audio, it does fine. Very weird, but thank you! Panic attack averted! 

I'm glad that this older conversation was able to help you, Megan. I appreciate you chiming in to share.

I am running into this issue in a 4.5GB, 7-scene, 200+ slide project. I have been troubleshooting for 2-3 hours today already.

Problem:
I try to preview selected slides; it starts loading, then gives me the error message.
I've been developing this course for months, and the issue started today after tweaking a few slides and then trying to preview them. The course is due in two days.
The issue happens 90% of the time - sometimes, it will let me preview some selected slides, but most of the time, it won't. There's no consistency as to which slides work and which ones don't.

Troubleshooting:
Restarted SL (many times)
Restarted PC (many times)
Uninstalled/reinstalled SL (twice)
Tried previewing different slides/different scenes (with only about 10% success)
Reverted to a previously saved version
*Created a new file and moved each scene in one by one

Other relevant info:
I am using a built-in disk, not a network drive
My computer is over-powered with plenty of free space
I don't leave SL open when I leave the computer or put it to sleep
I update SL every time an update is available.

Results so far:
*The only thing that seems to show any success at this point is coping and pasting all seven scenes into a brand new file. All scenes made it in, and the issue hasn't replicated itself yet. This would seem like a win, but it comes with a major caveat...
I was hoping that after moving in an allegedly corrupt slide, the error would appear, so I could pinpoint it and fix it in the original file. However, it didn't. The new file has no errors. Does that mean I need to spend the time re-creating my player and all the customization that didn't transfer over? I want to do everything I can to avoid this because it's adding hours of work late in the game, and I'm very concerned something will slip through the cracks. Is there any other way I can still make the original story file work?

Hi, Robbie.

Thank you for detailing what you're experiencing!

Since you've already attempted some of the suggested troubleshooting steps, I want to connect you with one of our support engineers through a case. I opened one on your behalf, so you should hear from our team soon via e-mail.

Hi, I am unable to preview the slides. It was working fine previously, but suddenly stopped working. I tried removing newly added objects, audio files, also imported it, but it's not working!

I have even tried copy, paste the slides on a blank slide, new project, still I get the same error message. Any guidance or suggestions to resolve this  issue are greatly appreciated.