SOS! Deadline looming and new to Storyline - can't edit a slide I made, everything greyed out, three weeks left of free trial

Hi Ruth,

Welcome to the E-Learning Heroes community! I appreciate your patience in conducting troubleshooting. 

There seems to be no object in the timeline; it's as if what I see in the slide is an image background, and there is no object available to work with. Can you confirm this? If I am mistaken, it would be helpful to see the Storyline file to understand why this is happening. Do you mind attaching your project to this discussion or privately in a support case?

Hi, Ruth, 

In your video, you have a Master Layout selected when you tried to click the objects. However, it looks like everything is on the Master Slide:

Go to VIEW> SLIDE MASTER again, and select the Master Slide to see if that's where the objects are.

FYI:  Anything on the Master Slide will be on all of the associated Master Layouts. That's why both the Master Slide and Master Layout look the same in your example.

As Judy said, you don't have any slides; you have a Master full of objects. I suspect you went to the Master and placed a background graphic on it. You may have tried several before you found one you liked. You were pleased with the result; so pleased in fact, that you forgot to close the Master view and return to the slide view before you started adding objects to the slide. Since you placed those objects on the "Master" layout, every new layout you create (like "Blank") will look like the master. Then when you return to Slide or Story view, every new slide you create will look like the "Blank" layout. That's the purpose and special power of master layouts. Since those objects are on a master, you cannot change any of them, except by changing them on the Master.

Choose View -> Slide Master. Select the top slide of the thumbnails on the left. If you roll over it, it will be named Master Slide "Graphite".  Press CTRL-A to select all. Everything will be selected. Press CTRL-X to cut all. Everything will be copied to the clipboard and deleted from the master. Choose View -> Slide View. You will see a blank slide. It will have a brown background, because that graphic is placed on the background of the master, and as such cannot be copied or cut. It will show on all new slides. Press CTRL-V to paste the clipboard. Everything will be copied to slide 1.1.

Hi both,

I think you are right! I'm attaching a copy of my project here. What steps do I need to take so that I can edit and add to my project?

Thank you for such quick responses!

Ruth