Forum Discussion
New in Storyline 360: Text Autofit Enhancements
We know how important it is for all learners to easily access and read the text in your courses, which is why we’re excited about the improvements we’ve made to the text-authoring experience in Storyline 360. With the text autofit improvements we’ve just released, you have new ways to manage text elements, more control over your text, and easier ways to make your text accessible. Here’s a quick summary of these improvements.
Greater control over text
Three new text autofit options help you preserve your preferred font size and prevent text from automatically shrinking. Now you can choose from “expand width,” “expand height,” and “fixed size” options. Read more about each of these autofit options and see the difference between the old and new approaches in this article.
More precision over the size of your text box
Before, when you tried to resize a text box to your preferred size, it would automatically default to the height of the first line of text. With the new text autofit enhancements, you can now easily set the precise size of your text box regardless of the amount of text.
Having more precision also means you have a more accurate view of how your text will appear in the published output.
Faster workflow for a smoother experience
Now, with a single click, you can quickly toggle between different autofit options to accomplish more in less time.
Improved readability across browsers
Since accessible text is HTML text, it can display differently across browsers. With text autofit improvements, now you can easily adjust the text elements and remove scroll bars before learners see them.
We hope you’ll love the enhanced authoring speed and flexibility and greater control that comes with these new text autofit improvements. To learn even more, check out Storyline 360: Text Autofit Improvements and Accessible Text Features in Storyline 360.
Since this update came in we are unable to preview or publish any of our projects. I have submitted a case but wondered if anyone else is experiencing this issue.
Everything was fine until this was updated.
My coworkers and I have been experiencing extreme slowness when previewing and publishing. Even previewing ONE slide takes a very long time now.
Hi Lesley,
Thanks for connecting with our Support Team and working diligently with my teammate, Shiela, to get to the root of what you're experiencing.
It looks like we discovered a bug where:
In Update 52, imported text from PowerPoint generates scrollbars in Storyline 360 if the option to stop fitting text to this placeholder is selected in PPT.
I'm sorry if this is slowing you down! In the meantime, you can revert your version to Update 51 as a workaround. We'll reach out when we have any updates to share on a fix.
Would love to get updates on this fix RE: unable to publish or preview with this latest release. Posting a comment to be in the loop. Thank you Ren.
Where in PPT is this? I don't ever recall a stop fitting text. Because of the scroll bars I tried to adjust all my text boxes so they are already large enough, but STILL the scrollbars.
Same problem. Thanks for this post. I'm reverting to 51, for now.
Here's the other part of the problem...if you revert to previous version and you have done any substantial amount of work in 52, you won't be able to open it in 51. So you either print an outline by publishing to word and recreate it manually, or live with the bug in 52 until there's a fix. I'm living with the bug.
Thanks for the info. Reverting to the previous version did not work for me either.
I've been having the *exact same issues Scott. Super frustrating. I tried reverting back too, but then was not able to open the file I had started with the "new version".
After sleeping on the problem, both solutions I tried are not acceptable. If we are unable to open SL pre V52, in V52 that is a major error/bug. If I need to update content, it would mean hours of tedious labour to copy content; slide title, slide text or other content, notes, and text to speech. I guess SL Engineers better get busy.
I agree that this is certainly a major bug. I've just tried creating a new file in v3.52 & saving it without even adding any text fields! And it won't open in an earlier version of SL360 giving the error message:
This project won't open because it uses features that aren't available in this version of Storyline. The features in use are:
Text Scrollbars
Install the latest Storyline update to open this project
There's absolutely nothing in the file at all apart from a single blank slide so this message is obvious nonsense.
Like many SL developers I frequently have to rollback SL versions or resort to using an older version of SL360 I keep installed on another PC for emergencies, in order to work around some of the worst bugs that now invariably appear with new updates, so I can see this latest issue becoming a major concern.
It is one thing for updated file formats not to be forwardly compatible between major releases but for this to happen between minor updates, and without any advance warning being given by Articulate that I have seen is wholly unacceptable. Note that no warning is given in either in the article above or when you click the 'Upgrade Project Text...' button in Format Shape | Text Box. Even more irksomely, in the Storyline 360: Text Autofit Improvements article linked above there is actually a Compatibility section ... which makes no mention that they've broken it!
Surely it cannot be beyond the wit of the SL developers to support new features in the updated file-format without breaking it for all older versions?
This is reminiscent of a similarly vexing issue with Text Styles that can break file compatibility between minor versions seemingly randomly i.e. a SL document apparently being tagged as using Text Styles, even though none have been consciously used. This then prevents it being opened in an older SL360 installation.
I couldn't find a way to navigate to technical support to submit a case on line, by email, or chat.
I wonder how long we'll be able to revert to V51, before being forced to install the V52 update? Ho many developers have time to spend 100's of hours recreating content for a simple update such as a regulation change, or a client policy/procedure update?
Hello Scott, Maureen, Jon Ellis, and Jeremy,
I appreciate you reaching out and sharing what you are experiencing as well as the troubleshooting.
I've opened up support cases for each of you so that you can work directly with a support engineer and we can take a look at your files.
Thank you, regarding:
Leslie McKerchie replied:
Hello Scott, Maureen, Jon Ellis, and Jeremy,
I appreciate you reaching out and sharing what you are experiencing as well
as the troubleshooting.I've opened up support cases for each of you so that you can work directly
with a support engineer and we can take a look at your files.Kindest Regards,
Scott Suter
Cell 647) 980 0233
Hi Leslie, thanks so much for reaching out and engaging us. The team from tech support has been in touch with me, as well. Here's a temporary fix that worked for me, but is quite tedious and time consuming. It also clarifies the sequence of events and problems I experienced. I'm concerned with what Jeremy's reporting. Here's my events and the fix:
After the V52 update in Storyline 360, I imported PowerPoint for a new project. I noticed the scroll bars ("elevator bars") appearing so I searched for answers, finding this E-Learning Heroes thread.
I reverted to V51 as recommended by Ren, but subsequently could not open what I created in V52. So, I reloaded the update. I pondered the problem, sleeping on it.
I manually copied my created content into a Word document, deleted the V52 presentation, then reverted back to V51. I have since recreated what I had done in V52, using a new PPT slide import in V51, and manually copying content from Word to SL, then manually manipulating it into a presentable format. That worked for me.
A Storyline source file only appears to be tagged as using Text Scrollbars (thus breaking compatibility) if it is either created in v3.52 as a new file or the file is 'upgraded' using the new button in Format Shape | Text Box.
So I'd suggest a viable workaround for now for anyone concerned with retaining compatibility would be to create a basic blank file using v3.51 or earlier, save it and then use a copy of that file as the basis for new projects. I've tried importing a PPT into such a file using v3.52 - the new auto-fit buttons do not appear and once saved the file still opens in earlier SL versions.
In practice I almost never begin a new project from scratch anyway and prefer to clone older projects as a starting point to avoid having to spend hours recreating complex functionality, so hopefully this issue, though annoying, will not actually impact my work too much.
