Launching a pdf via button click
Aug 16, 2012
Heard from a Storyline user today who wanted to make a PDF available via a button on a slide. Storyline offers a really easy way to do this, so I thought I'd post here in the forums in case others might be interested.
Once you add a button to your slide, you can add a trigger to the button which will "Jump to URL/File," and for the File field, click the "Load file" button (it's the one with the ellipsis) and then select the PDF from wherever it resides on your hard drive. Your trigger will end up looking kinda like this (although in this screen grab, my path is too long to see the actual pdf filename, but trust me, it's there ):
When you publish, a copy of your file will be bundled along with your other output, so you don't have to host the file someplace else or fuss with relative hyperlinks. In case you're wondering, the file will be in this location within your published output:
[Course Name] output/story_content/external_files/[yourfile.pdf]
You can also use a similar technique to add resources to text or shapes or images - check out this tutorial for details: Insert > Hyperlink trigger.
23 Replies
Thanks Jeanette - that's a really useful post.
Bruce
Very good go know!
Very useful indeed! Thank you!!
This was exactly the info I was looking for and I just tried it. Unfortunately, when I published, clicking the button doesn't open up the PDF file, even though I see it in the published folder's contents. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong. Help.
Hello Mai. Have you placed your content in the location where you plan to host it? You'll need to do that before you test. Otherwise, restrictions related to your browser & security settings can prevent the file from opening.
So for example, if you publish for Web, make sure to upload your content to a web server and test it from there (because if you test from your hard drive, you'll likely encounter problems with opening the file). Or, if you publish for LMS, upload your content to your LMS and then test. If you need to test your content locally, you should publish for CD, since that option prepares your output for local viewing.
Another option is to publish for Web and upload it to our temporary hosting server, Tempshare for testing. Content that you upload there stays active for 10 days.
I should also mention: the "Jump to File" trigger is not currently supported in the Articulate Mobile Player. It is supported in Flash and HTML5 output though.
If you continue to run into issues, I'd suggest submitting a support case so we can help you out.
Ok, so a technical question...here goes...
Is there a limit to how many files or the single file size that one would link to? For example, I might have a set of resources that could total into the multiple GB region... thoughts?
Hi Kenji, great question. I checked with our QA folks and there's really no ceiling on that. It might get a little overwhelming from a user-experience point of view, though, to have tons of resources that learners need to open as part of their learning experience.
Hi,
Thanks so much for the info, Jeanette. I published for CD and now it opens fine. I didn't know about Tempshare so I'll give that a try too. You guys are so awesome about responding quickly and with just the right answers!
So, it is more a limitation of the web server space. Thanks Jeannette!
So, hate to raise a thread from the dead, but I have a follow-up to this question. Many of our learning resources reside on a local windows network drive. I would like to link to those assets from the Storyline output, however, it consistently gives a 404 error in the browser. I have tried several different ways of calling the file (e.g. file://, http://, and https://), but none of them seem to work. Is this a limitation of the access permissions selected in the .swf files published for Storyline per this site?
Hey Kenji,
Here's a previous discussion from the Presenter forum which touches on some of the limitations of linking to a file on a network. Perhaps one or more of these issues is playing a role in your situation? Brian's suggestions in that thread might be helpful to you. You're also welcome to submit a case if you'd like the support team to dig a little deeper on this with you.
Thanks Jeannette. I tried some of the suggestions in that post. However, the odd part about all of this is that if I enter in the URL of the file (e.g. file://directory/path/somefile.txt) manually in Internet Explorer, the file is accessible. It is only when published as a link in Storyline, that the link goes dead.
I'll try to submit a case! Thanks!
EXACTLY what I needed to know! Thanks so much.
Jeanette...
Has anything changed since August re:
"...should also mention: the "Jump to File" trigger is not currently supported in the Articulate Mobile Player. It is supported in Flash and HTML5 output though..."
Thanks
Bruce
Hi Bruce! That's correct - the "jump to file" trigger isn't currently supported in the Articulate Mobile Player. What some folks do is host their pdf online somewhere, and use the Jump to URL trigger instead.
Hi! I have another question about this. I created a button to open a pdf per the instructions posted here. It worked great. Thank you! However, I needed to update the pdf, which I did and saved it with the same name in the same location. Now when I publish the course, it is somehow finding the old pdf and opening that instead of the new one that I found.
I have updated the link in the trigger for the button. What else do I need to do to ensure that the updated pdf is opened when the button is clicked?
Hi Catharine,
Is the PDF on a server somewhere, or are you pulling it from a local directly when you publish?
If you're pulling it locally, I'd check the published output folder to make sure that the new PDF is present.
If you're pulling it from a Web Server, I'd check/clear your browser cache to make sure it's not still present and just pulling up that old version. An easy way to check this is to access via a different browser to see if the old version is still getting pulled up. If it is...then...huh. I'm not sure how the old version would be getting pulled in!
Mike
Hi Mike,
The PDF is local. I checked the output folder and found that it was still finding the old version during publishing. I tried publishing to a new location to see if that would help. It didn't. Then I remembered that I was referencing the same document through the resources button in the player. I changed the link there to point to the correct document. The next time I published both links were pulling up the correct document. I'm not sure why that made the difference, but it did.
Thanks for your tips! It's always helpful to get some ideas for how to start tackling an issue!
Catharine
Still helpful 7 years later! Thanks so much :)
How does this work in relation to the review site? I have added a trigger to open a PDF file that's on a shared network drive. When I publish it to the review site, it should be embedded right? So it shouldn't matter where the file is located once it's published?
Good morning and great question, Bailey!
When you publish a course, Storyline will create its own copy of the document in the output, and learners should be able to access it.
Check out this sample slide that I mocked up! In it, I have this trigger:
However, I recommend against linking to documents on a network drive since that can cause erratic behavior due to latency. Are you able to move your PDF file to a local drive?
Yes I did do that, I just wasn't understanding why a network drive would cause any issues if it's pulling the PDF into the output file. So it sounds like there's a delay when pulling the file from a network drive and it ends up not pulling it into the final output file because of that?
Hi Bailey!
I'm happy to step in and help! A network drive can potentially cause corruption issues so we always recommend using the local drive instead. Is everything working well on your end when using the PDF saved to your C: drive?
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