Storyline Problems and Solutions

Help!! It crashed again!!

As any other software, Articulate Storyline also has its bugs, errors and crashes. These can range from minor things such as slowing down to some more detrimental issues which can cause the users to lose hours of work or more.

The question is always the same: what can I do about these?

First of all, we need to decide whether the issue is related to the software itself or is something we could do better or differently.

In this blog post, I will talk about these two main problem categories using real-life examples.

General software related problems

According to Murphy’s law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." which is especially true for technology. On a more serious note, it is important to understand that the software we use needs to do a lot of calculations and connect a lot of dots in the background. This is why there is a big chance that something may not function in the exact way we expect it to.

However, this still leaves us with the question: what can I do about it?

Let’s use an example from the LinkedIn post in which I asked you about your problems.

Problem #1

The issue is the following: you try to insert (import) an image to Storyline and as soon as it’s done, there’s an error message and no matter what you click on, the application quits without you being able to save your project.

Fix: In this instance, the image size may have been too large. I found it helpful when I reduced the size of the image when I was exporting from Adobe Illustrator (from 1500ppi to 1200ppi) and then there was no issue with importing it. There can be other reasons for this, and it’s worth checking out what others say in the Articulate community discussion boards:

https://community.articulate.com/discuss

E-learning Heroes is a great and very helpful community and while sometimes it takes some time to find the solution to your problem, it’s definitely worth checking it out. Plus you have the option to post your own questions too.

Problem #2

Storyline randomly crashes without any known reason.

This is one of the most annoying issues I’ve ever encountered, partly because it’s almost completely unexpected and mainly because there’s not much you can do about it.

Fix: Even though there’s probably no solution to this problem, there are still a few things we can do to minimise its effects and/or regularity. Firstly, almost everyone in the Articulate community suggests saving everything on a local drive including any media that you use in your project or the Storyline file itself. Secondly, as obvious as it may sound, it is quite important to get into the habit of saving our project as regularly as we can. This can save us a lot of extra time if (and when) we need to recreate something after a crash.

There’s always hope

This category brings more joy compared to the previous one, even if the topic itself is not quite fun. The following examples cover a collection of difficulties we have a solution for or at least some kind of a workaround to make our plans come true.

Problem #3

Images behave strangely, don’t appear, or are present on multiple slides in Storyline.

This is a regular and important issue as pictures are the most often used media type in almost everyone’s e-learning development process.

Fix: Apart from some of the reasons mentioned above (e.g. the images being saved on a local hard drive), one of the most important things to do is to check the file format of the images. For instance, once I was working from a PPT deck and the problem was caused by using a less usual image type (.svg, vector) when I copy-pasted it into Storyline. Solving this issue is usually quite easy, you only need to save or transfer the images in another, more common format, such as .jpg or .png (you can right-click and Save as Picture).

Problem #4

Corrupt file or object in the project.

The reason behind this is not completely clear either, but receiving this error message can stop you from being able to publish your course.

Fix: I found the solution in different Articulate community threads and the process is tedious but definitely worth it. Using a narrowing-down technique, you need to identify the slide and the object on the slide which became corrupted and replacing that corrupted object will solve the problem. Your narrowing-down process means trying to publish bigger parts of the course (5-10-15 slides) and then if there are no issues with that, you can move to the next part until you receive the original error message again.

Problem #5

Triggers don’t work.

This is a vague definition of the issue, but I think almost everyone ever who has used Storyline has, at some point, had this problem. It happens more often on slides with many objects and layers that the well-planned interaction doesn’t work for some reason.

Fix: In most cases the key to this issue is simply checking the trigger. For me this often means I need to check whether I've set it for the right object, right state etc. The problem can also stem from the fact that there are more triggers set for one click, which many times need to be put in the right order so that they work in the way you want them to do. Finally, if you have a condition, make sure you double check that the object / variable set for it is the right one and the condition doesn't conflict with another trigger you'd created earlier.

Useful tip: as time consuming as it is, it’s really worth naming the objects on the slide individually so you can easily keep track of what’s happening with them even if you move between the layers. Without this, once you start having multiple objects with similar names, the chance of choosing the wrong one will be much higher.

Problem #5+1

I received this one in a comment and this is about the built-in drag and drop activity. The commenter’s issue was that she wanted the objects to return to their original position when the learners submitted their answers.

Fix: Unfortunately it is not as easy to do this as you would first think. It’s important to highlight that working efficiently in Storyline (or any other application) also means that we understand its limitations. This means that we know what’s possible and what is not. You can read more about limitations in my Speed tip blog post: https://www.zsoltbarath.com/post/storyline-speed-tips

Useful tip: There are many workarounds available out there for problems that you may face. These allow you to extend the possibilities within the software and customise the interaction according to your needs. For this particular issue, have a look at this discussion.

Conclusion

This post contained just a few of the hundreds of issues that Articulate Storyline users experience on a daily basis. A big part of e-learning development is problem solving and learning how to deal with them is one of the key points of being good at what we do.

It can often be quite annoying to have Storyline crash (again) but at the same time, it’s a great feeling to get to the stage when you can finally publish a course and receive some good feedback on it. Last but not least, if e-learning development was so easy, who would ask us to do it for them?

Please share your own problems and solutions in the comments below or let me know if you would like Part 2 with more errors and fixes!

Also visit our resources page for some useful storyline checklists.