Storyline Files & Dropbox

I have also been dealing with this issue since early 2020. As this issue clearly affects a large group of users, please prioritize fixing this issue. There are workarounds, but the workarounds take extra time and add steps to our workflow that should not be necessary.

Hi All,

Thank you for sharing your recent concerns with Storyline and Dropbox. 

To prevent file corruption and other erratic behavior that can occur due to latency, we stand behind working on a local c: hard drive.

We hear you, though, and will share the latest insights with the team. I'll circle back if we have any new updates or info to share.

 In the interim, we recommend turning off syncing to Dropbox while working on a project with these workflows:

• Storyline: Recommended Workflow for Collaborative Network Environments
• Follow These Tips to Reduce Your Risk of Corrupting or Losing Project Files

We also invite the community to share their tips on backing up files!

This issue has been a real headache for many months. Not sure what changed with Storyline several months back to cause this problem. As John stated above, no other application has this problem with Dropbox. Pausing Dropbox sync requires pretty constant interruption in my workflow. As you state in one of your documents linked above, regular saving is best practice. However, this means regular sync pausing in Dropbox which is a constant interruption. Does Articulate see this as an issue? Or, are you just suggesting we pause Dropbox sync and that's the end of the story? I'd really appreciate an update as to whether this is something that will be addressed, or, if Articulate is suggesting a permanent change in the workflow of those using Dropbox and Articulate 360. Thanks for info on this!

Hi Mary Beth,

I'm not sure what changed either, but we have always recommended working on your local hard drive (typically your C: drive) when creating, editing, and publishing Storyline courses. Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, such as file corruption or an inability to save changes. 

Syncing applications, like Dropbox ( or Google Drive or One Drive), may stall while trying to sync your project to the cloud storage. We recommend disabling automatic syncing of your files from these applications to avoid such issues.

As we have all said multiple times, we are saving to our c drive. The issue is the subsequent syncing between the c drive and the cloud. From the responses  it seems clear that Articulate does not consider this a priority and we are stuck with an inefficient work process. This is disappointing.

Hi Mary Beth,

Correct. We haven't changed anything with Storyline that would cause this behavior and the workflow I shared above is the same one we've always recommended. If anyone is not following that workflow, then we certainly recommend doing so.

I wanted to share this tidbit where Tom shared the same sentiment in an older blog post from 2012:

I don’t want to run the risk that Dropbox’s active syncing interferes with my multimedia production.

This is definitely an Articulate issue and they just don't want to own it. 

Well they have similar functionality and don't necessarily work the same way exactly....that's underlying technology that we don't know about. That said, your comment shows that it's not an Articulate issue, it's a Dropbox issue....otherwise it would be failing under OneDrive also. Keep in mind that Dropbox software updates itself regularly, so I'd suggest if Articulate is working fine under OneDrive and isn't working under Dropbox, then an auto-update to the Dropbox software has introduced the issue.

Again, I'd never work with a file in either of these system for precisely the issue on how they operate. I always take files out of synched folders to work on....including network drives.

I'm bumping the thread to see if anyone has any updates on these issues. Having lost a day's work via a OneDrive sync issue, I'm now experimenting with Dropbox. Working on smaller projects, in unshared folders, OneDrive worked fine. But the file I inherited is large (2.5 GB) and in a shared OneDrive folder. 

Disabling and re-enabling sync isn't a good option, as I'll surely forget one or the other, defeating the utility by reinserting the possibility of human error. Articulate devs creating a technical solution to how Storyline caches and saves files is what's needed, rather than admonitions to "work locally." But, be that as it may be, I'm curious, as of 2022, which file-sync platforms work (if any) and which ones don't. 

I'll start the list by noting the OneDrive doesn't work--at least for large .story files in shared folders. I'm not sure if it works for large files in unshared folders or not, though I may test it. I'm currently testing Dropbox--even though I've read it also has issues. 

Thank you Mary and Douglas for the feedback. I'm going to try the Dropbox + sync pause option. I forgot, as Mary pointed out, that you can pause it for a set amount of time. If that doesn't work, maybe I'll set a calendar reminder for myself--and end-of-day task. This at least gives me a way forward.