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10 Storyline Tips to Make You Feel Like a Pro

Articulate Storyline is a popular tool for building online training, and like most software programs, it has many capabilities. Storyline is a robust program, and this means it’s possible to overlook really helpful features. Today, I’m  going to dig in and cover some cool things you can do to save time and make life easier when developing a course in Storyline. So, let’s get cranking!

Here are 10 tips to make you feel like a pro:

1. Keyboard Shortcuts
Let’s get this one out of the way right up front… Storyline has dozens of keyboard shortcuts, and you can add the ones you use the most to the Quick Access Toolbar. Here’s a handy list for you: Keyboard Shortcuts in Storyline 360 – E-Learning Heroes (articulate.com)

2. Align to Playhead
Here’s an easy way to adjust things on the timeline: simply right click an item in the timeline layer and select Align to Playhead. This will snap the item’s start point to the playhead. You can do this with multiple layers by the way. Note: There’s also an Align to Start option that allows you to quickly move an object to the beginning of the timeline.

3. Fade Transition
Some of the animations and transitions included in Storyline are a bit over-the-top and look a little bit cheesy in a professional course. However, one quick tip is to go to the Design tab, and select a Fade transition (personally I think 0.25-second fade is short and sweet). Then select Apply to All. This will quickly give all the slides in your course a nice smooth touch.

4. Arrange Objects Button
I really like this one. Select the Arrange button to uncover a ton of options. Under Size you can quickly make things the same width and height or make them larger and smaller. Align lets you space multiple objects equal distances apart horizontally and vertically. You can also quickly center something on the slide. Use Rotate to quickly flip an item horizontally or vertically.

5. The Old “lorem ipsum’’ Trick
Add a textbox and type “Lorem()” to instantly fill it with lorem ipsum text. This is great for making template pages to be filled in later.

6. Use the C Key for Cue Points
Don’t forget to click the C key to quickly add a cue point when listening to audio on the timeline.

7. Expand Timeline
Use the expand ‘timeline visualization‘ button to show or hide all of the items on a timeline. When clicked, this button allows you to scrub the timeline in real time instead of having all your objects stacked on top of each other.

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8. Paste (Exactly) in Place
Normally, if you copy and paste an item, it will shift over 20 pixels. You can click Control + Shift + V to paste something exactly in place.

9. Perfect Line Spacing
I can’t tell you how often a new bullet point gets added and all of a sudden there isn’t enough room in a pop-up or on the screen to display all the text. Did you know you can go beyond the typical single-space/double-space line options? Click the little Line Spacing icon and then select Line Spacing Options at the bottom. This brings up an additional dialogue box. Select Spacing > After to add or remove some distance between bullet points and paragraphs. Very handy!

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10. Redock All Windows
Have you ever accidentally grabbed the entire timeline and undocked it? What a pain — now you’re left holding a chunk of screen — lonely and abandoned. It doesn’t have to be like this… go to the view tab and notice the Redock All Windows button. Give that a click and presto — problem solved.

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Bonus Tip: Mini-icons
Take a look way down at the lower-right corner of your screen. See those three mini-icons? They’re a quick way to switch between Story View and Slide View or to Preview (the entire) course!

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There you have it! These 10 tips (plus one) will save you time and make your life as a developer just a little bit easier.

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Resources

Blog: A Brief Introduction to Unity for Storyline Developers

Podcast Episode: Advanced Storyline Tips and Tricks

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