Forum Discussion
Play and Stop buttons greyed out in Timeline
Sometimes my Play and Stop buttons are greyed out (and can't be used) in my Timeline in Storyline. What could be causing this, and how can I reactivate them?
Thanks!
Hello Everyone! ✨
I'm happy to share that we have released a new update for Storyline 360 (Build 3.76.30446.0).
In this update, we have implemented a fix for:
- Timeline preview buttons weren't always clickable.
As a first step, I recommend updating Storyline 360 to the latest version. Here's how:
If you have any questions, please let us know in this thread or privately in a support case.
Have a great day!
It is obviously a bug.
For me it happens when I have an audio file in the slide. Must be some problem re-accessing the audio file.Was this ever resolved? I am experiencing the same problem still and it's pretty clunky to work with under tight deadlines.
I don't think it's been resolved, but for me, if I go to another slide or two, I can usually get the play buttons to work on those slides, then I return to the original slide and it's no longer grayed out. Hope that helps.
Hi Donna - just wanted to let you know that replying via your email includes your signature here. You're welcome to pop back in and edit out any personal information if you wish. :)
Thanks, Alyssa for the heads up!
I just experienced the same issue. I took Donn's suggestion and it worked..
Thanks!
Glad to hear it, Jane! Let us know if you've got any further questions!
Thanks, I just ran into this issue. For what it's worth, I would like to add that the issue began when I shifted to working in a new scene. I resolved it by finding working slides in a different scene.
My story: I am working in a 7 scene project in AS2, and adding my narration audio files as a final step. In scene 1 and scene 2, I was able to play the timeline and position objects, no problem. Scenes 3 and 4 went OK, but then I reached Scene 5. Scene 5 was already heavily populated with audio files, because of a scenario that was recorded earlier in development. Only a few slides required my new narration files, but the play button was greyed out and I lost the ability to note my cue times for how I was going to position objects on the timeline. I went back to scenes 3 and 4: also greyed out (uh-oh). I went back to scene 2, and the play button was operating as expected. Returned to scene 5? All good all the sudden. Whew!
Thanks for the workaround, folks. You are saving my team valuable time.
Thanks for popping in to share Ieva :) This is a great community!
Hi there, folks. In order for our team to determine what is causing the issue of the timeline preview buttons intermittently becoming disabled, could you answer a few questions?
- What version of Windows are you running?
- Do the buttons appear functional at first and then become disabled? Or are they disabled from the very beginning of working on the project?
- Does the size of the project seem to affect this behavior? What's the average size of project where you see this behavior?
Hopefully if we work together, we can find some common denominators on this elusive issue!
· I run AS2 on two different devices, running Windows 7 and Windows 10 respectively, and I’m afraid I can’t recall which project gave me the greyed out play/stop buttons.
· The buttons are functional at first. Then they grey out. The workaround suggested by other users—that you find a slide somewhere else in the project where the buttons work, and then return to the problem slide—worked for me. The buttons became functional again.
· I have only seen this issue in one project, although I have colleagues who have experienced this. My project was more than one scene, perhaps 40-60 slides at that point?
Thank you for looking into this for us!
I have had this same issue using Storyline 3 on a Windows 10 computer. My theory about this problem has to do with audio. As I observed moving from slide to slide, I noticed the play and stop buttons were grayed out while the audio loaded. Once the audio had finished loading, the play and stop buttons were available again. Thus, depending on the amount of audio you have on each slide, the time it takes to go from grayed out to available differs. Give it a try and let me know if anybody gets the same results.
I am also having this issue. I am using Windows 10. They were working fine when I was working on the project just yesterday, but now the option is greyed out. I don't believe it is size related, as I have worked on bigger files without the issue.
I've experienced this on several different projects, which varied in size. I was using Windows 7. The buttons worked initially, but at some point became grayed out. Once I found a slide that the buttons worked, they also worked on the original slide as well.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Donna - that sounds similar to what we've heard so far and we have the issue reported to our team. We'll keep you posted!
