Create, share, and publish Storyline 360 projects with confidence. The following best practices help protect your files, reduce the risk of corruption, and support smooth collaboration and course playback.

• Create, Edit, and Publish Projects on Your Local Hard Drive
• Save, Version, and Back Up Projects Frequently
• Send Projects to Other Developers When You Need to Collaborate
• Host Published Courses Online
• Optimize File Paths and Naming Conventions

Create, Edit, and Publish Projects on Your Local Hard Drive

Using a local hard drive for Storyline 360 project files and course assets minimizes the chance of file corruption and other unexpected issues. Keep reading to learn more.

Project Files

Always save and publish projects on your local hard drive, typically the C: drive. By default, Storyline 360 saves project files and published output to the Documents\My Articulate Projects directory unless you choose a different location.

Working from a network or external USB drive can cause file corruption or prevent changes from saving due to latency.

You can back up projects to a network or USB drive, but don’t reopen them until you’ve moved them back to your local hard drive. For ongoing access and collaboration, publish the project to Review 360 with the source file included or use a shared team slides library instead.

Course Assets

You might save course assets, such as images, videos, audio files, and documents, on a network or USB drive. Usually, this works. However, if you experience issues after importing an asset from these locations, the file might have been corrupted during transfer. To solve this, delete the asset from your course, copy the original file to your local hard drive, and import it again.

Signs of a corrupted asset can include:

• The asset is blank, distorted, or unresponsive. For example, an image displays as an empty box, or a video won’t play.
• Storyline 360 reports that the file format isn’t supported, even though it is.
• Preview doesn’t load properly, showing a blank slide or not loading at all.
• Player resources you attached are missing in the published output.

Save, Version, and Back Up Projects Frequently

Save your work often. Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S to save quickly, and make it part of your workflow.

Creating new versions throughout the development cycle allows you to restore an earlier version if needed. Just go to the File tab on the ribbon, select Save As, and give the project a unique name. For example, you might create a new version at the end of each workday and add the date to the file name.

Versioning also helps protect your work. Store earlier versions in Review 360 (with the source file included), a secure cloud location, a network drive, or an external hard drive. Always keep the current working version on your local hard drive.

Here are more tips to help avoid corrupting or losing project files.

Send Projects to Other Developers When You Need to Collaborate

If you need to share a project file with another developer, zip the file before sending it. Then share the zipped file by email, external drive, or network drive. Ask collaborators to save the zipped file to their local hard drive and fully extract it before opening the project.

If you published your project to Review 360, collaborators have access to integrated comments unless you password-protect your content or only let invited users view your item.

For ongoing access and collaboration, publish the project to Review 360 with the source file included or use a shared team slides library instead.

Host Published Courses Online

Viewing published courses on your local hard drive or a network drive isn't supported. Security restrictions in these environments can block certain features from working.

To reduce unexpected playback issues, upload your course to a web server or learning management system (LMS).

A published Storyline 360 course includes multiple files and folders. Keep the original folder structure when uploading content to a server.

When you need to test a published course or share it with stakeholders, publish it to Review 360.

Optimize File Paths and Naming Conventions

Keep file paths for your project files and published output under the 260-character limit imposed by Microsoft Windows, and note that the publishing process adds characters to the file path. Exceeding the total limit can result in incomplete output.

Avoid using special characters, accents, or symbols in your file paths and file names. Learn more about naming conventions in this Microsoft article.