Locked by Another Process

Hello Linda!

I'm sorry this error frequently appears when working in Storyline 360. I understand that you're working on your local drive but are you using either Dropbox or OneDrive to back up your files. If so, there might be duplicates of your project with the same name, causing the error message.

If that isn't the case, I'd like our Support Engineers to step in and find the fix. Please use this link to connect with a Support Engineer.

Hi Jon,

Unfortunately it's about 50/50 for me. As I stated in that older reply above, I still create a duplicate backup version of each and every file, for each and every time I hit save along the way. It's just second nature these days. I know it's several more steps than just hitting that Save icon, but these have come to my rescue more times than I can count! Especially in those instances of random crashes because I'm trying to resize an object on an already complex slide, and boom! down it goes. (That's the frequent winner for me of late.)

Half the time it is indeed because the file is being backed up (Google Drive/OneDrive/Dropbox) so I leave auto-backup OFF and only run it at the end of the day as I disconnect from the Windows device I remote into for Storyline. This has seemed to dial down the instances quite a bit - removes the conflicting file problem at least.

As for the times it happens and backup isn't running, and I've closed all instances and ended Articulate processes in Task Manager, restarted the app with no luck, etc. that's where my backup version swoops in to the rescue. I really don't even do the task manager/force shutdown/restart app dance anymore, and just open my backup copy. If issues seem to persist, THEN I'll shut it all down, and go in and force stop all Articulate instances if they need it.

Did you try Leslie's suggestion from 3 years ago for looking in temp files and attempting to restore from there? Hopefully you can recover something that way. Crossing my fingers for you!

Best of luck, and I hope you don't lose too much valuable work.

Linda 

Thank you for posting about moving the file to your desktop. That worked for me too.

I've been working on this monster project for months now and almost had a panic attack when the file did not open. I also tried making copies, moving and rebooting. For some reason, the desktop worked. 

I have the latest update and now almost every time I open this project I need to do this dance. I'm concerned the file might eventually become corrupt. 

I start getting this error recently and that's scare me a lot. After reading that feed seems like for most of you making duplicates or re-naming files works, for me most of the time not. Even I create a file copy and opening the next day, that copy is giving me the same error. In that case I have to constantly create file copies for projects I am working on. 

Time to time, the solution which works for me is closed the error and Storyline wait a minute or two and re-open a project file. 

All my files are stored locally. 

Hi Cezary! 

Thanks so much for sharing what you are experiencing. I'm sorry to hear you are having this error message pop-up.

Have you ensured that the copies you have made are named differently? This might be the reason you are still seeing the error message appear. 

If you are still having trouble, please use this link to connect with a Support Engineer. We'd be happy to assist with your specific project files!