A couple of years ago I made an auto-hotkey script (xPorter 1.0) for Storyline. I wanted to export the list of variables into an Excel sheet so I can document them. The solution was not scalable and after some code changes in Storyline, it wasn’t even usable.

Hence the new version: xPorter 2.1

Powered by python the new version got “smartomated” (that is smart as in smartsheet and automated as in directly extracting variables from the .story file).

The python scripts does the following:

1. Extracts the user variables found in the .story Stroryline file.
2. Checks them against the smartsheet you designate (using a sheet id)
3. If the variable is not captured yet, adds it to the spreadsheet
4. If the variable is already in the spreadsheet it updates it
5. The following values are captured: name, type, default value, randomized/min/max (if applicable)

Now I can document the variables in a spreadsheet and share it with others. Easier to keep track of variables and be consistent across projects.

Connect with me if you’re interested in using it. There are some prerequisites for this to work (python installation and access to smartsheet).