topic Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.” in ArcGIS StoryMaps Questions

Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

JosephMumley — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 15:28:23 GMT

When I attempt to publish my story map I get the prompt, “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story,” but does not anything else as to what the issue might be. I was able to publish the story a couple of weeks ago, then attempted to make some changes as of August 2nd.

Luckily I had duplicated the story map and was able to publish it, however, an hour later the same issue, “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.” Now I cannot save the changes I made, nor can I unpublish the story map. I am confused as to what the problem might be as the prompt is vague. Any suggestions as to what the issue is?

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/78213b2f9f794e37ad2a8821d145cad5

Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

AbbyE_Esri — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 16:56:56 GMT

Hi @JosephMumley ,

I'm sorry you're experiencing this. Can you recall what you were working on in the story when this issue started occurring?

It seems like the issue may be stemming from one of the web maps. There is an express map that seems to have attachments enabled, but no image resources that are viewable. Was that a recent addition to the story?

--Abby

Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

JosephMumley — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 17:24:32 GMT

Thanks for the reply. The story map seems to be working as of yesterday (August 6th). I was able to successfully unpublish and then republish, then it worked. (I tried this before but this was the first time it worked)

The express map with the attachments was not a recent addition, that was done in early June. Each point had a single picture but they seem to be gone (I did not remove the images).

At the time I had the issue, I uploaded the final video (50 in total) to the story map. At the time I used "Upload" but this seemed to slow down the loading time (total story map size was 1,569.17MB), so I switched to linking Youtube Videos (brought the total story map size down to 50 MB). Then the issue of being unable to publish, unpublish, duplicate, or delete occurred.

Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

OliviaHarrison — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 14:56:54 GMT

We're running into this problem now too - an issue when it's one of our executive team members trying to publish a report. Any ideas as to why?

Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

JosephMumley — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 15:08:09 GMT

Sadly, I do not know the exact issue. It took a couple days, but after I made some changes reducing the overall size of the story map, (reduced to 55mb) I was able to unpublish the story map then republish.

Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

AbbyE_Esri — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 21:47:19 GMT

Hi to you both,

I'm glad the story seems to have resolved itself for you @JosephMumley . @OliviaHarrison, since this is still occurring for you, I'd recommend reaching out to Esri Technical Support, so they can help troubleshoot on your story to try to recover that publishing capability.

--Abby

Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

OliviaHarrison — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 11:27:45 GMT

Our user also unpublished then republished which worked. The size of the StoryMap didn't seem to be a factor (<50Mb). We will try this fix if it happens again - thanks to @JosephMumley for the tip.

I do wonder if it's anything to do with having a YouTube video embedded, as our StoryMap also had this. Weird!

Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

ErinMaehr — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 19:39:44 GMT

I'm having this issue now too. Most of my items n the story map are my own photos as jpg or png but I do have a few express maps I made in ArcGis. None of them have any urls within the map itself though. I'm stumped as to why i can publish....

Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

ErinMaehr — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 19:40:08 GMT

how do you know how big the express map you created is? Where is that located?

Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

AbbyE_Esri — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 12:24:52 GMT

@ErinMaehr , the size of the express map is not something you can find as you can with regular web maps. Because of this, instead you can evaluate based off what you've included in the express map, for example, if you've included lots of image pop-ups.

Are you receiving any particular error when you aren't able to publish? Are you able to duplicate the story and attempt to publish the duplicated story? Feel free to send over a sample story or any error messages you're receiving on your end.

--Abby

Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

LaurenReilly — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:53:01 GMT

Hi there, I'm having a similar issue. When I try to publish changes, "sorry there was a problem publishing your story." And when I try to unpublished and republish, "sorry, there was a problem unpublishing your story." I was able to duplicate it and publish the copy, however, I have linked the old url in several places and printed the old QR code. Have there been any updates trouble shooting this? Any help appreciated! Thanks.

Re: Story maps: “Sorry there was a problem publishing your story.”

OwenGeo — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 12:53:36 GMT

@LaurenReilly - Please contact Esri Support so they can help you troubleshoot this specific issue with your story.