Forum Discussion
Missing SL 360 File
I created a SL 360 file on 8/14/2025 and updated it daily. Accessed it today, and it shows the last modified file dated 8/14/25 not 8/19/25. I published the file to Review 360 on yesterday and those files are present. However, I am unable to locate the 8/19/25 version anywhere.
Contacted my IT department for assistance and it is not showing any history of updates, only the 8/14/25 file. Checked Trash, One Drive, Desktop and performed a global search for the file. It is missing.
Opened a ticket with Articulate and hope they can provide an explanation. Has anyone ever experienced this issue, and if so, what was the solution? I sure hope six days of edits are lost and the file is saved somewhere. This may be wishful thinking at this point! :-(
Update: Since I published the project to Review 360 on 8/19/25, there is a "download project" link which allowed me to recover the 8/19/25 file, but it still remains a mystery as to why the file is missing. Hopefully, Articulate will respond with a definitive answer and solution soon. In the meantime, this was a workaround and allowed me to access the file. Whew!
10 Replies
Aw, man. I had this problem a few months ago over the course of a few days. I was able to find one file (I tried so many things that I don't even remember how I recovered it) but not the other. I don't think Storyline likes the way OneDrive works. Even if you're working on your Desktop (which is always connected and constantly backing up to OneDrive), I think it fails to see it as a local drive if it's syncing to OneDrive.
Ultimately, I stopped using OneDrive and switched to a different backup solution. I've had no problems since then. I'm curious to see if others have some insight on what's happening!
Thanks for responding. I will check with my IT department and run your thoughts by them, because something tells me this is going to happen again. The good news is that I recovered the file as follows: Since it was in Review 360, there is an option to download the project. If I had not located this download ability, I would have lost six days of work. I guess the workaround is to publish to Review 360 daily, as a backup, but that is such a nuisance!
I submitted a case/ticket. Hopefully, Articulate will have a solution to eliminate this in the future. Thanks again!
rachelatkaiser Thank you for the education about One Drive. I noticed that the file was still syncing when I tried to save it today. I submitted a ticket to IT regarding One Drive and Articulate 360. In the meantime, I will take JHauglie recommendation regarding saving SL files, until and unless this matter is resolved. Thank you and sorry you experience the same issue too... so not fun!
As shared, the good news is that when I published the file to Review 360 on yesterday, there is a link to save in the cloud. As a result, I was able to download the SL. Therefore, I did not have to recreate the file. That was pure luck!
Hi Monica_J,
I'm glad to see our community members were able to assist you here!
My teammate, Robert, has been assigned to your support case, so you'll be hearing from them shortly via email. In the meantime, I'd like to reinforce what others suggested, of creating and saving content on your local hard drive to prevent file corruption. I'm so glad to hear you recovered your file!
As rachelatkaiser notes - and many others on this forum - working off OneDrive or any shared network location is asking for trouble. Better to keep the work only in your C:\[computername]\Documents\My Articulate Projects location.
That being said - one location that you may want to check is your Storyline temporary files. These are at C:\ProgramData\Articulate\360\Temp - our IT policy now prohibits me from digging in there, but when I have needed it before I was able to locate a nearest-to-the-last-copy-that-I-could-remember story file. Good luck.
JHauglie Duly noted and lesson learned! I will save my projects as recommended. I checked the temp location and unable to access it either. So, I assume our IT dept prohibits access as well.
The good news is that I selected the box to save the project to the cloud when I published it to Review 360. This allowed me to download the most recent SL file from Review 360. Thanks for responding!
Update: IT doesn't allow me to save to that directory. Therefore, they will need to provide a solution so that I can successfully backup files. Our IT department isn't familiar with Articulate. So, I may need memory sticks until there is a solution.
Our team's best practices for this problem are to:
- Make sure your "working files" are on your local system only (while you are working on them).
- At the end of the day/week/revision cycle (you get to establish this), copy the entire directory to your OneDrive location. (Some of us do this daily, others do it weekly.)
- When the module is finished (we do get some of these!), we put a copy of the final story file and any other related files (resources, for example) on a shared network location. Each of the team members also keeps a copy of the same package, and we try to make sure that their final OneDrive version is the same as the shared network location version.
So far (since we made the transition to OneDrive a few years ago), we have only had a few instances where the "final" version did not align with the individual's "final" version. But it's made a strong case for consistent versioning and revision / naming controls.
Glad you are working things out!
