Guides
The problems people search for at the worst possible moment, answered properly. Every one of these starts with what to do before you reach for a tool, including ours.
Lost the Storyline source file?
The published course still runs but the .story file is gone. Six places it may still be, including the one inside Review 360 that most people miss, and what you can get back out of the published package when it is really lost.
How to open a .story file
A .story file opens in Articulate Storyline and nowhere else. What to do when you do not have it, depending on whether you need to edit the course, watch it, put it in an LMS, or just get the words, captions and media out.
How to open a SCORM package without an LMS
A SCORM zip is a folder of web files with a manifest on top. Unzip it and the course usually plays in your browser. Which file to open for Storyline and Rise, what you lose without an LMS, and the twenty lines that fix the one error that stops you.
Counting the words in a course for translation
A translation quote is priced on a number you have to produce, and the obvious ways of getting it miss whole categories of text. What counts, what your authoring tool leaves out of its own export, and how to get the split a vendor actually quotes on.
Converting SRT to VTT
The two caption formats are nearly the same file. What actually differs, how to convert one by hand without breaking it, which players and tools want which, and the faults that make a converted file fail quietly.
How long does it take to build an hour of e-learning?
The published benchmarks answer between 49 and 716 hours, which is a way of saying the question is incomplete. What the research found, what actually drives the number on your project, and how to produce an estimate you can defend.
Your SCORM package will not upload
Most rejected packages fail for one of eight reasons, and the LMS rarely says which. A diagnostic order that starts with the two faults that cause most of them, and what to do when the package uploads but refuses to track.
How many words fit in a minute of narration?
About 140 words a minute for typical e-learning narration, which makes a 90 second slide roughly 210 words. The working rates, why your script always runs longer than the arithmetic, and how to measure the rate your own narrator actually reads at.
Why your course forgets where the learner got to
Resume works for the first half of the course and then stops. It is almost always the suspend data limit: 4,096 characters under SCORM 1.2, and less under some versions of 2004. What fills it, how to measure yours, and the six ways to get under the line.
Alt text for e-learning images
Which images need a description, which should be silent, and what to write for the ones in between. Plus the nine faults that make alt text worthless even when every image has some, and how to find them across a whole course.
Turning a PowerPoint deck into e-learning
Storyline imports a PPTX, and knowing exactly what survives that import saves the afternoon you would spend finding out. The list, from Articulate's own documentation, plus what to do with the deck before you import it at all.