Pushing & Pulling Storyline Variables to Excel and back to Storyline as Variables

Use Microsoft Excel, Storyline, Active X to Push and Pull Data to a Local Excel file and back into Storyline.

You might want to use this if the following applies to you:

• You don’t have an LMS and you need to track data.
• You have little to no internet access.
• The company does not allow for Google Docs to be used.

+ Positives about this method:

• Internet Explorer works very well with this method.
• There is no “post publish surgery” required.

- Negatives about this method:

• Active X is a short term solution as it will not be supported in the future.
• Google Chrome will not work with Active X.
• If you will not be hosting these files on an LMS or Intranet, then the end user will have to select “Allow Blocked Content” to be able to push and pull the data correctly.
• The original Excel file must be closed when you are viewing the published files locally.
• Untested – I am not sure what happens when multiple people access the file at the same time.

This article demonstrates how to:

PART 1: Set up a Storyline file to write (PUSH) data to an Excel spreadsheet.

PART 2: Set up a Storyline scene to PULL data from an Excel spreadsheet back into Storyline.

Here is the finished project output , Storyline file, Excel file, and Javascripts.