I have a slide in Storyline with 4 links to pages on our company's intranet (in SharePoint). The triggers to "Jump to URL/File: http://xxx" are on nearly transparent rectangles over each picture. None of the links work when it is published. The mouse pointer turns to a hand when you hover over one of the pictures indicating there is a hyperlink, but when you click, nothing happens. Here's a picture of the slide. Any ideas? Thanks! (P.S.) The owner of this project wants it this way and not in a Resources tab.)

There is post after post about links to URL's not working and they are about to put me over the edge. I have a course with many text links within text boxes. I did not design the course and no option to redevelop at this late stage. Similar to some above, these are links to internal sharepoint sites at work except one or two public URL pages. Links are a real issue that need addressing in SL2 IMO. The triggers at times either don't work or one that was perfectly fine on one version of the course (version two was saved as to create a derivative course) are hosed in the second. I primarily publish to my local C drive at work as I was advised and then copy output to our network shared drives. And don't be fooled... testing the links simply by clicking the check link button next to the URL path in the trigger wizard window, that just opens the link. That's not testing whether your, in my case, 'text within xxxx' text box works. I published version 2 to my SME testers and I'm embarrassed they reported some 20 errors on non working links. In one case, linked text (top box of the wizard) somehow shows only the period at the end of the line. Another one is completely blank for link text. And when you highlight text within a text box to add (re-add) the trigger, it thinks you want the trigger to fire when clicking the box, not the highlighted text within the box. C'mon Articulate, please fix this in an update soon.

Hi, Beverly: I don't imagine your transparent text boxes have animations, which sometimes can cause hyperlinks not to fire. If this were happening to me, I would open up a new SL file and create a box with a link to google or amazon to see if maybe the site is the problem.

Thanks, Daniel. No animations on the boxes. They're actually rectangle shapes, not text boxes, so that's not the problem, either. I'll try your second suggestion.

OK, so following Daniel's suggestion, I created a one-slide file with a rectangle box linked to an external Internet website. It does the same thing when published..the "hand" icon appears when you hover over the rectangle, but when you click, nothing opens. Does anyone have any other ideas? I may have to redo this module in Presenter instead of Storyline, because i know it works in Presenter. Bummer...

Hi Beverly! How are you testing this content? Are you viewing the published course locally, by any chance? If you view published Storyline content on your local hard drive or send it to someone else to view on their local hard drive, you'll encounter security restrictions from the computer, web browser, Flash Player, and network that'll cause various features of your content to fail. To properly test your published content and share it with others, upload it to the environment for which it was published. Please review the following article for details: Publishing and sharing Storyline content

Links to web pages not working | Articulate

33 Replies

DanielBrigham
Community Member
13 years ago

Hi, Beverly:

I don't imagine your transparent text boxes have animations, which sometimes can cause hyperlinks not to fire.

If this were happening to me, I would open up a new SL file and create a box with a link to google or amazon to see if maybe the site is the problem.
BeverlyScruggs
Community Member
13 years ago
Thanks, Daniel. No animations on the boxes. They're actually rectangle shapes, not text boxes, so that's not the problem, either. I'll try your second suggestion.
BeverlyScruggs
Community Member
13 years ago
OK, so following Daniel's suggestion, I created a one-slide file with a rectangle box linked to an external Internet website. It does the same thing when published..the "hand" icon appears when you hover over the rectangle, but when you click, nothing opens. Does anyone have any other ideas? I may have to redo this module in Presenter instead of Storyline, because i know it works in Presenter. Bummer...
LeslieMcKerchie
Staff
13 years ago

Hi Beverly! How are you testing this content?

Are you viewing the published course locally, by any chance? If you view published Storyline content on your local hard drive or send it to someone else to view on their local hard drive, you'll encounter security restrictions from the computer, web browser, Flash Player, and network that'll cause various features of your content to fail.

To properly test your published content and share it with others, upload it to the environment for which it was published. Please review the following article for details:

Publishing and sharing Storyline content
- BethTarbell
  Community Member
  11 years ago
  Hi, I had the same problem. I published my content to Articulate Online and then zipped the file. I sent it to someone else, and they extracted the file and played the .story file. I played well, but none of outside web links worked.
  
  How can the security issue be overcome (if that is what this is)? Do they need to clear cache?
- BethTarbell
  Community Member
  11 years ago
  Hi, Leslie
  
  I am not sharing any zip files, only the actual URLs, which test fine when I click Test. But when I publish, they do not work. Thanks.
BeverlyScruggs
Community Member
13 years ago

Hi Leslie,

We upload our courses to SharePoint and provide a link to it on our company intranet (also a SharePoint site). All of the links are to documents on SharePoint sites. None of them worked.

I was on a deadline, so I went back and published the course in Presenter '09. The links worked perfectly. Why would security restrictions be a problem in Storyline but not Presenter? Can you tell me the best way to provide links to web pages in Storyline so they will work? I searched the tutorials and forums but didn't find a definitive or useful answer.

Thanks!
LeslieMcKerchie
Staff
13 years ago

Hi Beverly! I agree, as I do not think the two programs should have performed differently. Perhaps something was going on with your Storyline file? Next time you are having an issue with only one file, you can try to do an import into a new project.

As far as hyperlinks, you can check out this tutorial.
NicolaAvery
Community Member
13 years ago

Hi, thank you for all the suggestions above. I've had a similar problem today with just text hyperlinks not working. I only discovered it by trying out an ipad version so initially thought it was something I had done wrong in the publishing mode.

I also tried disabling pop-up blockers on browsers and copying the published files onto sticks and trying on other pc's but didn't work. I tried Articulate Online with a test file based on the advice above - one slide and one line of text in a text box with a hyperlink on some of the words and this worked ok.

I've now uploaded to our internal portal running Sharepoint 2007 and it works ok.
LeslieMcKerchie
Staff
13 years ago
Hi Nicola and welcome to E-Learning Heroes So, are you having an issue or did you get it resolved? Sorry, want to make sure I don't miss anything :)
LeslieMcKerchie
Staff
11 years ago
Hi Beth!

If you published and uploaded the file to Articulate Online, you should be sharing the URL for the course, not a zipped file.

As long as they are utilizing your published file, the links should work as expected.
BethTarbell
Community Member
11 years ago
I added my website links in the Resources section of the player. I see no trigger wizard in this section so I cannot select Jump to URL. Is there a way to access triggers from the resources section of the player?