Storyline Files & Dropbox

As Benjamin described very well, this constant control issue of the Storyline file ends up creating versions of a file that are not complete, even when you are renaming new versions and whether you remembered to turn DropBox off before saving, etc. Some of this confusion with files just cost me another 4 hours of work yesterday and the unproductive time dealing with this within a work team is a serious issue. Hopefully, there is something in the works to resolve this.

Yes, I have 2 employees who each lost an entire day's work because of this.  This should be a priority for the Articulate development team.

This continues to be a problem for our group.  

Has there been any resolution for the Dropbox syncing issue?

We can also confirm this issue. Storyline keeps the file open in such a way that when dropbox trying to sync they both have a conflict.  Here is my process.

1. Start the Storyline project
2. make changes, etc.
3. Save and get the "file in use" error message
4. OPen dropbox and quit dropbox
5. Save again this time choosing OVERWRITE
6. At this point I will leave dropbox OFF or Exited until I'm done with my Storyline project.

Hope this helps others.

I have also been dealing with this issue since early 2020. As this issue clearly affects a large group of users, please prioritize fixing this issue. There are workarounds, but the workarounds take extra time and add steps to our workflow that should not be necessary.

Hi All,

Thank you for sharing your recent concerns with Storyline and Dropbox. 

To prevent file corruption and other erratic behavior that can occur due to latency, we stand behind working on a local c: hard drive.

We hear you, though, and will share the latest insights with the team. I'll circle back if we have any new updates or info to share.

 In the interim, we recommend turning off syncing to Dropbox while working on a project with these workflows:

• Storyline: Recommended Workflow for Collaborative Network Environments
• Follow These Tips to Reduce Your Risk of Corrupting or Losing Project Files

We also invite the community to share their tips on backing up files!

When using the DropBox client, we are working on our local c drives. These files, in turn, replicate to the cloud. It is disappointing that every other application we use works seamlessly with DropBox but Storyline still requires that we pause syncing every time we want to save a Storyline file.

This issue has been a real headache for many months. Not sure what changed with Storyline several months back to cause this problem. As John stated above, no other application has this problem with Dropbox. Pausing Dropbox sync requires pretty constant interruption in my workflow. As you state in one of your documents linked above, regular saving is best practice. However, this means regular sync pausing in Dropbox which is a constant interruption. Does Articulate see this as an issue? Or, are you just suggesting we pause Dropbox sync and that's the end of the story? I'd really appreciate an update as to whether this is something that will be addressed, or, if Articulate is suggesting a permanent change in the workflow of those using Dropbox and Articulate 360. Thanks for info on this!

Hi Mary Beth,

I'm not sure what changed either, but we have always recommended working on your local hard drive (typically your C: drive) when creating, editing, and publishing Storyline courses. Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, such as file corruption or an inability to save changes. 

Syncing applications, like Dropbox ( or Google Drive or One Drive), may stall while trying to sync your project to the cloud storage. We recommend disabling automatic syncing of your files from these applications to avoid such issues.