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RichardCrabbe-9's avatar
RichardCrabbe-9
Community Member
2 years ago

Locating an object using the Object ID#

When you export a translation to word each object with a text string is given an object ID number. Does anyone know if you can locate an object using a that number? 

  • Looks like you're using the 'Export as a single table' method and the IDs generated are not available to locating an object.

    If you leave this option unchecked, you get the latest version of export for translation and can get some information with the ID provided (scene, slide, layer, and table of contents) but not down to the object level.

    Is there something in particular that you're trying to accomplish?

    • RichardCrabbe-9's avatar
      RichardCrabbe-9
      Community Member

      We have a template which our team has been using for many years to build hundreds of courses. The template has gone through dozens of iterations over the years, copy/pasting different elements, objects reusing them over the years. Somewhere along the way, someone on our team added some content text to the ALT text to a few different objects, which has caused these bits of ALT text to propagate through quite a few courses. When we try to translate a course now, the ALT text expands the output from a normal 300-400 pages to whopping 800 pages. Our translation team is definitely unimpressed.
      So far the only way I have found to locate and eradicate the text is to search each slide using Focus order to view the ALT text and remove the offending content. Any suggestions you might have would be appreciated.

       

      • ThorMelicher-b5's avatar
        ThorMelicher-b5
        Community Member

        Since you want to delete all of them, the solution is much easier.

        If you want to do it manually, you can do the following:

        1. Make a copy of your course (or template) and then change .story to .zip.

        2. Open the zip folder.

        3. Extract each slide.xml file, open them with a text editor, and then find the alt tags and then remove the text between the quotation marks " ".

        4. Save each xml file and then bring them back to the zip file.

        5. Change the extension back to .story

        Manually, this will still take a lot of time - you could speed it up with other tools that do global search and replace for example.

        Jürgen may have some additional ideas here and I have some other ideas if you would like to discuss privately, please send me a private message here or reach out to me on LinkedIn.

        (and in case you didn't notice, your previous messages are showing your e-mail address.  You can edit and remove as needed.)

        Thor

  • articulate could fix this requirements (don't translate "alt text") very easy

    -> export setting for translation  "don't export alt text"

    @articulate: with this setting option for exporting the translation file, you could save everyone - who does not actively use "alt text" - a lot of time and money

  • i would not recommend solving the problem directly at the source (by hand*) - there is always the risk of corrupting the storyline file

    • best case with damaged files: storyline don't open to file
    • worst case with damaged files: the storyline file behaves strangely and inherits this behavior to the subsequent projects

    * if you try anyway, make backup copies of the .story file and keep them in a safe place