Forum Discussion
How to use "Auto Recovery" in Storyline 2.0
I have just lost 8 hours work on a Storyline 2.0 project.
I clicked on "Preview Entire Project" and the software aparrently crashed.
It came back with nothing and the page layout and project layout are empty.
I do have the sStoryline options set for "Save Auto Recovery evey 10 minutes".
But, I can't find any info anywhere about how to use this. I have searched the entire PC for any files associated with Articulate, but since I'm not sure what I'm looking for, it's a futile search. I have found a number of temp files created withing 30-45 min of the crash but they are all 0KB in size.
Please help.
15 Replies
Had you saved? For auto recovery to work you must first save the project so it has a name.
Even with auto recovery I save frequently as nothing is infallible
Yes, I had saved. But I don't see anything associated with the name I had given the project.
This is the 2nd such crash of Storyline 2.0 on this PC I have experienced. Sadly, I had many such crashes and even total system "lockups" while using the the older version.
I mention this only because, strangely, almost all have occurred when I'm in the middle of a project and someone comes in and I decide to show them what I'm working on or they ask if I can show them. I don't hit "save" in these instances because I never know how long it's going to take to complete the save (although, I have had crashes while saving). I usually just hit "preview" which, for whatever reason, takes much less time (even for an entire project) than a save does... ...and it crashes. I have attempted to do repairs to the software once or twice but, because I must have admin rights to do so, and it can take weeks, literally, to get admin to log in for that, I just start rebuilding from scratch.
New rule as of right now. NO MORE AD HOC PREVIEWS... FOR ANYONE.
Oh well.
William (Mac) McLemore
Nissan North America-Canton, MS
Technologist/Training Development
Global Maintenance ReinforcementThis really sounds to me like a bad install, or a corrupted computer (virus/malware), or both. Storyline should not be crashing that much. It rarely crashes on me and SL1 crashed like 2 times in 2 years.
For me, it just works when you try to open the project again after it crashes. You will see a popup explaining that the file was auto-recovered and it asks if you want to open the recovered file or not. I have had this happen several times now and it has always recovered the crashed file every time with no data loss yet. I still keep knocking on wood though, just in case.
I always save before a preview/publish had it fall over too many times at this stage.
Auto recovery should just kick in when you reopen the file, any chance you are working on network drive?
Hi Mac,
I'm sorry to hear about the crash and missing files. In regards to the auto recovery files, you can try looking from them on your system as the file should be created for the project under the /AppData/Roaming/Articulate/Storyline path. This auto recover file is named using a format like this:
<name of the file without .story extension><creation time stamp of the file>.tmp
So if you were working on a file called
"my_sample.story"
The auto recovery name might look like
"my_sample635502380729253410.tmp"
As long as the file name of the project doesn't change, it would keep overwriting the same recovery .tmp file over and over again. So if you have a single project open for a long time, it should only result in a simple .tmp file that keeps getting overwritten with the latest auto recovery data.
When the project is closed (either by opening a new project or closing Storyline), then any .tmp file that was created for auto recovery purposes should be deleted. If Storyline crashed or there was an error trying to delete the .tmp file, then obviously it would stick around.
You can look for this file in the directory mentioned above, create a copy of it just to be safe, then rename the extension from .tmp to .story. Open it in Storyline after doing that.As David mentioned, you may also want to look at conducting the repair as detailed here.
Hi L'Oreal,
I'm sorry to hear about your file, and thanks for letting us know that you were also working with our Support engineers and they were able to confirm it was a corrupted file as well.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, you could look for the files here:
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.File corruption 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 your projects periodically as you're working on them and take advantage of Storyline's AutoRecovery feature (http://articulate.fyi/1peyrV4).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 Storyline open and unattended for long periods of time. Some users have reported file corruption after leaving Storyline open overnight. It's possible that a malware scan or disk backup could run because the machine is idle, making Storyline vulnerable to crashing.Thanks Ashley for this very useful comment. It took me a while to find these steps.
I suggest if you create a separate thread and list all these steps.
Sorry that it took you a bit to find this Mohammad - and it is something shared in a few different forum discussions. You can also feel free to always reach out to our Support Engineers here and they'd be able to share the steps and information with you faster.
I hope you guys figure out what is going on.
I have lost hours of work on two occasions. In both, there has never been a crash. I saved my file with no issues, when I try to re-open it again, it tells me the file is corrupted.
I have been able to recover some work using the .tmp file, but I cannot figure out why will it be corrupted after a perfect save, and I don't want to be re-doing work.
If you guys find a solution, please let me know.Hi Juan,
This discussion is a bit older, but I'd also want to confirm you were working with the latest update of Storyline 2 which is update 11. In addition you'll want to work on local project files as detailed here.
Outside of those items, there hasn't been a consistent reason that we've seen in regards to the issue with a file becoming corrupt as you mentioned. You could also try to look at importing it into a new project file as detailed here.
hello
what is the path of recovery file for storyline 360? %appdata%\Articulate\Storyline in this path i can find only file of storyline 2 .
Hi RAffeele,
It should be the same folder in Windows Explorer: %appdata%\Articulate\Storyline
You do need to have auto recovery turned on and would needed to have saved your file once prior to the crash of Storyline 360. Just a reminder it's not an auto save feature, but an auto recovery based on Storyline crashing unexpectedly.
