Lost the .story? The published course remembers.
Slides, real text, media and graded questions come back editable. About half the triggers rebuild as working triggers; the report lists the rest.
Last reviewed
Import the published Storyline package — SCORM, xAPI or web — into Scormbusters. Each slide is rebuilt on an editable slide canvas with its real text, images, audio and video, and graded questions arrive as working quizzes with their answer keys. You then export a new SCORM, cmi5 or xAPI package.
No .story file is needed. Triggers, variables and states come across as working Scenes triggers; JavaScript and motion paths are listed for you to rebuild.
- Storyline cannot open published output; without the .story file the published package is the only copy of the course.
- Scormbusters reads Storyline HTML5 publishes (SCORM, xAPI or web) and rebuilds each slide on an editable slide canvas with its real text, images, audio and video.
- Graded questions arrive with their answer keys: multiple choice, multiple response, true/false, word bank, fill-in-the-blank, numeric, matching, sequence and hotspot.
- Triggers are rebuilt as working triggers where the slide canvas runs them the same way (jumps, layers, show/hide, variables and their conditions, named states, media): 49% of trigger actions across our test corpus. Execute JavaScript, motion paths and the rest are counted in the import report.
- Flash-era Storyline publishes (no html5 folder) recover structure only.
First, look for the .story
On the machine that last edited the course, check Storyline’s own recovery routes: it keeps temporary copies of open projects, and Storyline 360 can keep backups (Articulate: recover a project). Ask whoever published it, too — vendors and former colleagues often still have the source.
If the .story is gone
- Rebuild in Storyline from screenshots and the text of the running course.
- Embed the published course unchanged as a web object in a new Storyline or Rise course. Quick, but nothing inside it is editable.
- Patch strings by hand in the published data files. Storyline stores text in escaped JSON and as SVG text with remapped font characters, so this is error-prone.
- Recover it as an editable course with Scormbusters, as below.
How it reads a Storyline publish
A modern Storyline publish keeps the course as data files under html5/data/js/: scenes, slides, every object’s position, the media library, and the vector text. Scormbusters reads those files as data — nothing in the package is executed — and rebuilds each slide with the objects where the author put them.
The words come from the rendered text itself, not the alt text, so what learners actually saw is what you get to edit. Layers, author-written alt text, video captions and question banks that drew slides at random come across too.
Accessibility on the way through
The free scan gives Storyline packages its deepest check: it reads the tab order the package declares, drag-only interactions and declared colors, and reports which controls a keyboard user cannot reach. You can run it before you import anything.
In Scormbusters, questions are operable from the keyboard and drag-and-drop has a select-then-place alternative, and the editor checks contrast and alt text as you work.
Step by step
- Get the published package from your LMS or file share.
- Run the free scan to see its accessibility findings.
- Import it and read the import report: what came across, and what did not.
- Fix the flagged issues, rebuild interactions, and edit the content.
- Export SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, cmi5 or xAPI.
Frequently asked questions
Can Storyline open a published course?
No. Storyline edits .story project files only; the published output cannot be opened in it. If the .story file is lost, the published package is the only copy of the course.
Is the text recovered, or just screenshots of it?
The real text. Storyline draws slide text as SVG, but every run keeps its characters, and Scormbusters reads them directly. Storyline also scrambles characters when it subsets fonts; the importer learns and checks the mapping for each publish so words come out spelled correctly.
Which question types come across?
Graded multiple choice, multiple response, true/false, word bank, fill-in-the-blank, numeric, matching, sequence and hotspot questions, each with its answer key, as working quiz objects. The quiz pass mark carries over. Any question that cannot be rebuilt is listed in the import report.
What about triggers, layers and variables?
Where the slide canvas runs them the same way, they are rebuilt as working triggers (49% of trigger actions across our test corpus), read from the slide data the publish already carries: jumps between slides, layers shown and hidden, objects shown and hidden, the course's variables with the conditions that test them, object states by name, and media. Author feedback layers on questions are used as the question's feedback. A trigger that would run differently is left out and counted rather than approximated: Execute JavaScript, motion paths, conditions mixing AND with OR, and conditions on Storyline's built-in states or object properties.
What about old Flash-era Storyline publishes?
Publishes with no HTML5 output keep their content in Flash files. For those, Scormbusters recovers structure only.
Bring one stuck course. See what comes back.
Upload the published zip and play it rebuilt as an editable course, with the list of anything to rebuild by hand. No account, no card; the private link lasts seven days.