Storyline Crashes on publishing

FYI I've learned a lot about Storyline's many bugs and here is some info for those of you experiencing Storyline crashes on publishing.  Here's the workaround solution if you get desperate, but with this many bugs, I strongly suggest saving a back-up version every 3 to 5 hours of work and keeping these on hand in case you need to bring in any slides when one corrupts.

Bugs in Storyline on crashes/publishing:

What I find is several issues but - issue 1 - if their inconvenient "RE-log-in or lose all work" pop up happens while you're editing anything, you are bound to have a corrupted file after that, esp. if you are using Engage.  

Issue 2) If corrupted and crashes on publishing, 2 options are required - 

1st OPTION - if it crashes on publishing (when you click on the LMS/tin can/scorm area to set the course ID etc) - then try to publish the storyline file without changing any of those tin can..settings  (Just publish without changing that setting) and if it lets you do this, then Save, and close the file. THEN you can typically reopen it, and then try to publish again after setting that LMS tracking area e.g. scorm/tin canny etc). (E.g. it wants you to publish AS IS and then save, close, go back in, and then you can edit those details such as Course ID/scorm vs tin canny etc).

2nd Option - if the Storyline crashes on publishing - relates to a corrupted slide - as it often will - potentially due to a BUG in Storyline re the "oh we want you to re-log in again or you will lose all your work' pop-up - seems to corrupts a lot of things - 

Then you have to go slide by slide to see what the BUG in Storyline has corrupted.

Often in a crash, (which is also more common if you are editing your audio files in a slide) - your audio files etc. will suddenly go 'missing/can't find audio file' on at least 2-4 slides. 

And if you got bumped out of the system (despite logging in again) during an edit of an ENGAGE slide, when that annoying and buggy pop-up "relog-in or lose work" happens while you're editing (it should NEVER do this while you're in a file), then your Storyline will crash on publishing.  It simply WON'T publish and Storyline will crash repeatedly. 

To fix this issue, go slide by slide, check all engage files, find the one that doesn't seem to be working (e.g., find the Engage slide that suddenly won't open, and chances are high its the one you were working on when the log-in system BUMPED you out of it - a known bug in Storyline on that 're log in' issue -  

So if you use Storyline? Save back up versions every 3-4 hours or you'll be sorry when the thing corrupts, which will happen regularly if you're a robust 

 Hope this helps.  So in summary, 1) they need to remove that annoying and buggy feature that pops up mid-editing and insists you log in again as it notoriously corrupts your file while it does that, esp Engage slides) - and 2) you need to see if it publishes without changing the LMS (if not, then look slide by slide for the buggy one, delete it, then recreate it or grab an earlier version of that slide in one of your many backup versions).