Forum Discussion
Text boxes "forget" their right margins
One nagging issue I've had since Storyline 1 is that sometimes text boxes on a slide "forget" the right margin of the box, and they expand to the width of the longest sentence in the box. I have to drag the right edge back to where it was supposed to go. Does anyone else experience this? Does anyone know why it happens, or how to prevent it from happening?
16 Replies
Here is a brief video I took of where this happened. You can see on the thumbnail of the slide that the text was wrapping correctly previously:
https://360.articulate.com/review/content/786ae3b0-c6b7-420a-bd11-3bf9ea57b526/review
Hi Will,
Thanks for the video to help explain it. I've seen similar, but often only when upgrading a project from one version to the newest version, and it's been inconsistent as well.
First things I'd check are the Textbox properties, are they set to "wrap text in shape"? Also, it looks like you're seeing this on a Quiz Question - so I'd check the slides and the slide master that questions are based off of.
Also, other times I've seen users run into this, their files have been saved to a network/shared drive. It's worth double checking that the files are local, and that they adhere to the other guidelines here to prevent corruption.
If you'd like, I'm also happy to test out one of your files and see how it behaves on my end. If you can share a copy of it here, upload using the Add Attachment button.
I've attached an example file. You can see the issue on multiple slides, but the first example is on slide 1.2. Note that when you click the text box, the selection rectangle briefly shows the correct margins and then expands out.
I am working on a new computer with a fresh install of Storyline, and the file is saved locally.
This still happens to me quite often. I never save to a network drive.
I'll try to add an attachment the next time it happens. Usually I'm in such a hurry to fix it that I don't think to provide a file.
Hi Will,
I took a look at your course and I found the issue. You need to select the text box, then go to Align Text, in your Home Menu and then click more options. From there, select the options I have outlined in the image. This will prevent it from stretching across.
WOW! Thank you Andrew! I've been dealing with this for years thinking it was a bug, and you found the answer! I wonder if "Resize shape to fit text" is something that comes across from PowerPoint during the import or something. Whatever it is, now I know how to fix it for good, so much appreciated! Have a great weekend.
You are welcome, Will! It may be that or just the standard option via your Masterslides and/or Storyline. I know I have opened customers' courses before for editing and review and have seen theirs with the same Resize shape to fit text option selected and I don't believe they did it on purpose. So, it may be the standard setting for Storyline.
I am glad I could help! I know that was frustrating for so long.
As I'm going through my course now I'm noticing that sometimes the textbox with this setting (resize shape to fit text) expands when I open the file and slide, and sometimes it does not. So that might have been part of what threw me.
At first I thought the ones that did not expand must have "soft returns"/linebreaks added that made them avoid expanding the bounding box, but mysteriously that wasn't why some expanded and some did not.
but whatever the case may be, I'll always change my body text off of that setting from now on for all my slides!
I found out more details of what is happening: when I copy or paste a slide, in some cases the text formatting of my slide main body is changing incorrectly between copy and paste. See this Peek video for the details: https://360.articulate.com/review/content/7582fbdc-7542-4ce6-b6b5-41b821fbec71/review
In other words, there appears to be a copy/paste bug that changes the setting of the text field when the slide it is on is copied and pasted somewhere else. Note that this does not happen when I drag and drop the same slide from one place to another, only when I use the copy/cut and then paste functions. Also, I could not get it to happen in all cases. But the attached story file exhibits this behavior. I will also send in a ticket.
So, the long and the short of it is that copying and pasting slides was introducing this unwanted (and incorrect) formatting change.
Now the plot thickens because I've also discovered that when I close and then open the file, all the text box settings change themselves to "Do not Autofit" without "Wrap text in shape" selected.
I've now come up with a way to reproduce this issue. I think it happens because I am applying a new slide layout that only has a header (to avoid changing the body text) See this Peek recording:
https://360.articulate.com/review/content/a6d93e30-f62d-490c-94f7-5e3ca830be48/review
I've attached the story file I used in the Peek recording.
