Urgent translation import problem

Hi Corey,

Are you using Storyline 1 or Storyline 2? If you're using Storyline 2, any version of Word 2007 or later should work as detailed here in the system requirements.  Also, are you following along with the directions here in regards to conducting the translation export/import? 

If you'd like us to take a look at the behavior, we'd be happy to. We'll want to see the .story file that you're working with and the Word doc that you're using to import in the translated content. 

Hi Bingjie, 

As a general rule, you'll want to follow these guidelines:

• Work on your local drive (your C: drive). Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, including file corruption, loss of audio, and other unexpected behavior. 
• You should also make sure the directory path to your project files and your published output is less than 260 characters (for example C:\Articulate).
• Avoid using special characters, accents or symbols in your file names.

Can you tell us a little more about your workflow, in case that could be the cause of some of the trouble?

Thanks!

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your reply!

To answer your questions: We have been each working from our local drives - we use the same version of a file downloaded from our file server, but each makes a local copy on their own computers when testing the imports. I think that our published output is less than 260 characters... I will have to check this for each of our machines, but to my knowledge so far I think that they are within the character limit. We do not use special characters or symbols or accents in our file names.

Our workflow: we used one computer (actually, the one with the oldest version of Storyline) to export Word documents for translation. We send these Word documents to a company which translates them, and sends it back to us in the same format. We then disperse the returned files across different members of our team, who import the file, and this is where we have seen the problems. 

My suspicion was that maybe the problem came up because the older version of Storyline exported the Word files, so it caused problems on all of the computers with new versions of Storyline?

We just tried a test run on two computers to see if this is the problem.. I will try to describe what we did below, and maybe you can help us understand the back end a little more? To give context, computer1 is the one with the old version of Storyline, and computer2 has the updated version of Storyline. The file we are trying to import is the one returned by our translation company. Same word file, same Storyline file. We downloaded fresh copies of the Storyline file from our network onto both computers and tried a Translation-import of the document - Computer1 had no problems and Computer2 encountered several missing text boxes.

After this, we ran a test and downloaded fresh copies of the Storyline file.story onto both computers. 

1. Computer1 ran a Translation-export on "file.story" and saved the output as "test1.doc". We changed font colors on "test1.doc" and tried a Translation-Import on fileA.story in the same computer. Everything ran smoothly - we can tell because all the font colors changed in the Storyline file. 

2. Computer2 ran a Translation-export on "file.story" (downloaded from the network) and saved the output as "test2.doc". We changed font colors on the file, ran a Translation-Import on the same computer, and everything ran smoothly. 

3. We exchanged and opened up "test1.doc" and "test2.doc" on the opposite computer. Computer1 tried a translation-import with "test2.doc" on its local copy of "file.story", and vice versa. Both computers were able to run this test smoothly, no problem.

4. We then ran the Translation-import on the original file given to us from the translation company - now, it works smoothly on both computers, even though we encountered missing text boxes on Computer2 at the beginning.

Then, we ran one more test only on Computer2, trying to remove Computer1 from the equation. We used another fresh copy of file.story, translations-exported a Word document, re-imported this Word document to ensure that this works, and then re-imported the translated document from our translation company. Now, it works again. We did one more test by downloading a fresh copy of file.story, and only importing the translated document. Again, there are missing text boxes. 

This is as much as we have tried to do so far... I apologize for such a long message! But I hope that providing this information can help you to maybe see where the issue is, and help us to solve it? Our temporary solution is to always do the process of export-import-import to ensure that text boxes are maintained... 

Hi Bingjie!

Thanks for such a clear explanation of your scenario

My suspicion is that the older version of Storyline on "computer 1" is the root of the trouble, but we'd love to get our hands on the .story file to be able to run some tests on our end. Are you able to open a ticket and send that over to us? We'd really appreciate it. 

Thanks, Bingjie!

Was there a resolution on this one?

We've just run into this same problem in our office. It seems to only happen when I use my PC to import. The other two computers used to do it had no problem. Both of them have significantly higher specs than mine (i7 processors and 8GB RAM as opposed to my Intel Core2 Quad and 4GB RAM).

Hi Andrei, 

Doesn't look like we ever got to work with Bingie on her case, but I'd first make sure that you have the most recent version of Storyline installed - Update 3.

Once you've installed the newest version, please try the translation process again. If you're still having trouble, we'd be happy to take a closer look at it. Please go ahead and open a ticket, including the .story file, so we can take a closer look at what's going on.

Thanks!  

Hi! was this ever resolved? I am having the same problem - when I import a translation, some text boxes are empty. Very frustrating, because it is totally random, and can affect text boxes on layers and even within states, so its hard to spot them all!

Hi Rebecca,

I don't see where Andrei submitted a support case for this or Bingjie, so I don't have information to share about what was happening for either of them. We're now on update 4 of Storyline, are you using the most current version?  If not, please follow the steps to install the newest version and test the translation again. If you're still having difficulty can you share the .story file with us? You're also welcome to share it here. 

I too am having this same problem with version 4. Initially i thought it was due to the client changing formatting in the exported word document. But in checking back - the text was the same as the original - so that wasn't the problem. I then tried importing the original document I exported from storyline. All seemed normal, until you start going into slides and then BAMM! The text disappears in front of your eyes and is replaced by an empty text field.

To add further confusion to this, the text fields that get replaced seem random. Each time i try this import function, different text fields are removed.

Hi there James,

Sorry to hear about the trouble!

I know it was suggested earlier, but can you confirm that both the Storyline project files and the translation files are local?

• Work on your local drive (your C: drive). Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, including file corruption, loss of audio, and other unexpected behavior. 
• You should also make sure the directory path to your project files and your published output is less than 260 characters (for example C:\Articulate).
• Avoid using special characters, accents or symbols in your file names (this includes spaces and underscores).

Additional information regarding "Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces" in Windows operating systems can be found in the following Microsoft article.

Also, does this seem to happen if you import to a specific file? If you haven't already, please try importing to a new, blank project file. Let me know if you see the same results.

Thanks!