Forum Discussion
Reorder Storyline Scenes
I have a large Storyline course with about 15 scenes that are all out of order. I am aware that you can cut and paste scenes to reorder them, but this is just not practical as there are many branches that would be lost or messed up by using that approach. The reason I need these scenes in topic order is because I need to generate translation reports and a published Word version. The results would be a mess without scenes in order of presentation.
I need to know if there is any easier way to reorder scenes. Storyline gurus? Anyone?
22 Replies
Just a heads up that the videos that are on this web page https://articulate.com/support/article/how-to-change-scene-order were created in 2012. They are very antiquated. I am also trying to reorder my scenes and the navigation now is vastly different than the software in 2012.
I'd recommend leaving the scenes the scenes ordered (and therefore numbered) the way they are and just moving the slides around to get the content in the order you need. The layout you see in slide view will arrange itself based on the triggers.
The above does not work on Storyline 360. Any other method?
Friendly reminder that this is not a feature that exists anymore. Scenes can only be ordered and numbered in the exact order they were created. They can no longer be copy + pasted, or dragged into a different location.
They can't be copied and pasted, and they can't be dragged, but they can be cut, clicked, and pasted. The pasted scene is pasted to the right of the click.
See the attached video.
@Walt Hamilton,
I cut and pasted a few scenes as you did in your video. Not only am I able to reorder them, but the scenes are also automatically renumbered according to location. One exception appears to be the designated Starting Scene, which will always be top-leftmost scene and retains whichever number it had when it was flagged "Starting Scene."
Do I have this right or am I missing something?
Sorry. I meant to include that in the recording, but forgot. It's easy to change the starting scene, but to renumber it, you first need to make it and the number it will have non-starting scenes. You need another temporary scene.
Good to see that this is on the Storyline roadmap. I was thinking of adding the feature to my latest Storyline companion app I'm developing but for now I'm going to pass.
But with that pass, here's another way of re-arranging scenes - I'll let you decide if it's a better way for your situation. :)
- Set the scene you want as the Starting scene and then save your file. Note the name of the scene (in my example I will have 4 scenes - Starting A, Scene D, Scene B, and Scene C.)
- Change the extension from .story to .zip and then extract the story.xml file (you'll find it in the \story folder)
- So it's easier to read, you'll want to paste the contents into an XML formatter page - https://jsonformatter.org/xml-formatter makes this easy (no uploading if you paste your content into the lefthand side)
- Search for your scene name.
Once found, you'll be looking for something like this:
Notice in the highlighted text that the first tag is <scene> and the ending tag is </scene>
Looking through the screenshot, you'll see there are three additional scenes - Scene D, Scene B, and Scene C. Move the scenes in the order you would like. The second scene will become scene 2, the third will become scene 3 and so on. Just make sure to grab the text starting from <scene> all the way through </scene>,
I've re-arranged the example so the scene order is now Starting A, Scene B, Scene C, and Scene D:
Almost done -
- Take the newly updated text, copy it, and replace the contents that are in the story.xml file.
- Save the story.xml file and then replace the story.xml file in the .zip file
- Change the extension from .zip back to .story
- Open your course to see the newly sorted scenes
Some notes:
- Always best to make a backup before doing something like this
- As noted earlier in this thread, triggers will override presentation
- You can't move the Starting scene with the way I explained this method
- You'll have to follow Walt's method above if you want the Starting Scene to be 1 if it was a different number to begin with
I have a very simple fix, no coding or cutting slides and pasting them around.
Start at the last scene in your order, select the scene by left-clicking, then right-click the scene. You will see "Starting Scene" in the drop-down menu. Select that and make this scene your new starting scene, then select your actual starting scene and set that back to your starting scene.You will see that your last scene is now Scene 2. Work backward through your scenes doing the same method and you'll reorder your scenes the way you want them.
BINGO! Articulate, you really need to implement a simple ordering to your scenes...
In the August 23, 2022 (Build 3.67.28569.0) version of Storyline they added the feature to re-order. You can get more information here:
