Forum Discussion
Storyline keeps changing my slide order
I have been working in a project for a few weeks and just noticed at some point Storyline360 changed my slide order. See in the attached image that slide 1.12 and 1.13 are not sequential. Initially I tried to drag and drop the slides back in order But these slides won't drop into any place other than where they are. I then tried a back door technique of cutting the slides and then pasting them back in their proper place - this worked for a day but then after deleting a slide much further up stream slides 1.12 and 1.,13 went right back to the order in the screenshot. I have also tried resetting slide order from within the player menu. This also works most of the time, but any change anywhere else in the project puts the slides back out of order. There are no hard links on any of these slides (they only have jump to prev and next) the only hard path is they all come from a main menu slide (slide 1.10) and all have a return to main menu button.
My biggest negative memory of Storyline 1 was slide numbering and order (i.e. issues just like this) and now in 360 I am seeing the same issues. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
37 Replies
Hi Linda,
I'm so sorry to hear that you're experiencing this issue even after creating a new file! I understand how frustrating this can be while working on a deadline, so I've opened a support case on your behalf to investigate what's going on. You will hear from one of our Support engineers soon via email.
Try "Jump to Slide Name" instead of "Jump to next".
Is there a resolution for this issue? I have a very large project and Storyline is randomly reordering the slides. I am losing confidence. How will I know if it has reordered - before publishing. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Storyline. I have repeatedly unbranched, reordered, and re-branched my slides. I have renamed to avoid confusion.
Please provide guidance.Hi Sara,
I'm so sorry to hear that you're experiencing this issue, especially while working on an important project. Are you comfortable sharing your file so we can investigate further? You can upload it here or privately in a support case. We'll delete it from our systems once troubleshooting is complete.
The first thing to check is that the slides actually have changed positions, and not just moved around in the story view pane. The true order is the way your learners view them when published (or your view in preview). What you see in the story view pane is not related to the actual order.
I have found that when I click on a slide thumbnail in the Story View that if the mouse makes even the slightest twitch during the click, it will modify the slide order, even if I don't see it. Changing one trigger can drastically affect the story view. Sometimes you make a change, and it takes a while for the story view to redraw the thumbnails.
After what seems like years of wasted time spent trying to find where slides are and how they got moved, I have determined it is a vast saving of time to create every "jump to ..." trigger using the slide name, rather than "Next". That prevents the slides from ever changing sequence. They may change numbers, but not order. A simple drag will change their numbers back.
I too am having this issue, and I cannot believe there is no fix yet!! At times, in a project with a lot of branching and scenes, I don't even notice that slides in a completely unrelated branch of the scene randomly jump to a new position.
This is very embarrassing when you submit a file for review to your team, or worse to the client, and find that the last minor change you made moved the slides around and you didn't notice. So the client or your supervisor sees an incorrect/non-functioning slide order. Imagine what they think about my skillset!
I have started undocking the scene for slides I am working on so that I can see (in my peripheral vision) if something changes on a different slide. I have caught these random slide order moves MANY TIMES by doing this, but it is not a solution to the problem.
Is there any update on this issue??
Hi Angela,
I'm sorry to hear that you ran into this issue.
I'm aware that incorporating a branching design in Storyline 360 rearranges the order and position of the slides, but I'm not aware of any issues wherein this rearrangement causes slides to become non-functioning. Even though a slide is moved to a different position in Story view, any triggers linked to that slide should still work.
Would you be willing to share a copy of your project file here or in private by opening a support case so we can take a closer look at what's happening? Please include a short description of which slide is non functioning properly. We'll delete it when we're done testing!
Unfortunately, I would have to create a screen capture video, but I am not allowed to because of corporate policy. The video would be needed for you to actually see that the program is orphaning and / or changing slides. This happens both within a scene I am working on, and across scenes as well, even in completely different branches of the project. This is not a specific slide causing the problem. But it happened again today. I was working on triggers in scene 5 and things got changed in scene 4. You can see a slight flash of the screen when it happens, but until you go over to the other branches / scenes and dig into them, you have no idea what happened.
Hi Angela,
Thanks for providing us with a detailed description of the behavior you're experiencing.
If you're already working locally when making changes to your project file, try doing a repair of your Storyline 360 installation to see if this helps. Doing the repair will help ensure that you are working using a healthy installation of the application.
If the issue persists, open a case with our support team here to get in touch with our support team. They are equipped to troubleshoot issues that contain proprietary information, and will be in a better position to investigate the matter with you.
Hi Joe this seems to be happening more, I have a branching slide with a 3 part menu jumping to 2 slides and back to the menu, on Saturday I had a nightmare where editing one slide in the scene would cause one of the other slides to change place. Also there is a really annoying feature in Storyly view now where editing a slide in story view causes a refresh and jumps back to the top of story view
Hi, I was just wondering if it will be worth looking at your sates?
I just came upon a similar problem and discovered that I accidentally once copied a textblock with an active trigger to a state, and this caused the problem as Storyline was trying to adhere to both tirggers, the actual one and the one in the state.
I hope that makes sense?
Thank you for that suggestion, but the problem is not with the triggers. It's just that as I'm editing triggers in, say slide 4.8, I notice a flash in the scene panel and then I later find slide 7.6 is suddenly orphaned and no longer in sequence. In scene 7 it is suddenly hovering by itself in the corner. And I wasn't even working on scene 7. Also, if slide 7.6 has a sequence after it (7.7, 7.8, and 7.9 all part of the chain) the entire sequence may become orphaned. In some cases, it will not become orphaned, but it may be moved to a completely different position. I can find no cause and have made sure I am working locally, and Storyline is up to date. To reduce the chance of it happening, I no longer use "Next Slide" but designate the specific slide that should be next. So far that is working, but I need more testing to see if it is a permanent solution.
Angela Destro, M.Ed.
Instructional Designer
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Hi Angela and Phil! ✨
Thanks so much for sharing what you're experiencing.
I have a few questions to better assist:
- Have you both tried a repair of Storyline 360?
- Does this happen if you try and recreate this in a brand new .story file?
Phil- Would it be possible for you to share your existing file as well as a screen recording with us in a support case? I'd like our team to take a closer look at the behavior you are experiencing.
Angela- I understand your need for privacy with the confidential information at your organization being used in your course. Our team would be happy to sign an NDA so that we could proceed with a support case.
Also, It looks like part of your email signature came through when you replied via email. You can remove that if needed by clicking ‘Edit’ beneath your response. Here’s a quick Peek video if you need help.
Looking forward to hearing from you both!
The answer to the questions is yes, and yes. I have uninstalled and reinstalled storyline, and the problem happens in multiple projects, whether editing an existing project from a year ago, or starting with a brand-new project. So far, my best solution is to not use jump to "Next Slide" but to actually designate the specific slide in non-linear projects.
All of our projects name the slides when using the built-in player PREV and BACK buttons; I have the same problem in my assessments with a link to every question. I thought it was me and my mouse, but now I see other people have the same problem. I will submit a case and hope this gets resolved soon!
Hi Maureen,
Thanks for sharing an update in this thread. Did you happen to open the Support Case after you replied? I ask because I'm not seeing an open case on our end, and I wanted to be sure we could help investigate this further. Happy to help!
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Storyline 360 is still remapping programmed player/button navigation in Aug 2024. The only solution I have found is to strip all slide navigation programming from a scene's player/button triggers (set all navigation buttons to Unassigned) then reorder the pages in the page thumbnail filmstrip (a captivate term, left Scenes column), then re-apply player triggers and custom button navigation. This page order issue also affects page number variables if you want to show slide progress with page numbering. SIGH... :(
Best recommendation in my opinion as a eLearning developer - develop all slide content first, then set player/button triggers LAST.
