Storyline says this file is corrupted. Here's exactly what's wrong, and how much you can get back.
Storyline's own error message doesn't tell you what's wrong or how much of the course is still there. This does.
Click below to see exactly what's wrong with it, free and with no signup.
You'll get a specific diagnosis and an exact count of how much of the course (slides, media, quiz content) is still recoverable. When the course structure survives, you also get a rebuilt .story file to try in Storyline, with every recovered file either checksum-verified against what Storyline originally wrote, or repaired where it was safely fixable.
Diagnose my file →No account, no upload. Nothing leaves your browser.
What "corrupted" usually means
A .story file is a zip archive with a different extension, holding a set of XML files that describe the whole course: every slide, layer, trigger, quiz question, and reference to every media file it uses. When Storyline says a file is corrupted, something in that structure didn't survive intact. In practice it's almost always one of a few specific things: the save was interrupted partway through (a crash, a forced shutdown, a lost connection to a network drive) and the file was left truncated; a sync tool (OneDrive, Dropbox, a network share) rewrote the file mid-save and left it in a half-written state; or the zip's own directory structure, the index Storyline uses to find everything inside the archive, got damaged separately from the content itself. That content is often still recoverable, in a way Storyline's own error message doesn't hint at.
Why Storyline won't tell you more
Storyline's file-open routine either successfully reads the archive or it doesn't; it isn't built to diagnose a broken one, so its error message is the same generic "file is corrupted" whether ten bytes are missing or the file is unrecoverable garbage. That's the actual problem this page exists to fix: before you spend time on autosaves, backups, or IT, it helps to know whether this specific file is a five-minute fix or genuinely gone.
What to try first
- Check Storyline's autosave/backup files. Storyline periodically saves a recovery copy alongside the working file (look for a similarly-named file, or check Storyline's own "recover unsaved changes" prompt on next launch). If one exists, it may be a clean, more recent copy that opens normally.
- Check whether the file finished copying or syncing. If the file came from a network drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, or an email attachment, a broken or interrupted transfer is a common, fully recoverable cause. Re-copying the file directly (not through a browser preview or a sync client mid-sync) sometimes resolves it on its own.
- Get a specific diagnosis instead of guessing. If neither of those turns up a working copy, run the free diagnosis above; it'll say exactly what's wrong with the file and how much of the course is still there, before you spend more time on trial and error.
What the diagnosis shows
Click "Diagnose my file" above and StoryAudit reads it the same low-level way it would read any .story file, entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded (see the security overview if that needs to be verified). You'll get:
- A specific diagnosis of what's actually damaged: a destroyed zip index, a truncated save, or a genuinely unreadable file.
- An exact count of how many slide files and other course content came back intact and verified, out of the total the file should contain.
- Whether the file's core structure (story.xml, the file that ties every slide and setting together) is recoverable and readable on its own.
- When anything comes back, a download: a rebuilt .story file if the course structure survives (each file either proven byte-identical to what Storyline wrote, or repaired where it was safely fixable), or the individual recovered files otherwise.
- A summary you can copy into a support ticket, or email to yourself as a record of exactly what's wrong.