story map disappeared

[KDiver]

My student was using the new story maps platform this week. She went to work on the story map again today and cannot find it. There is no evidence of her story map in either her My Stories or ArcGIS Online content. She tried restarting the apps, logging out and back in, etc with no luck. Any idea of a solution?

[OwenGeo]

Hello -- Thanks for contacting us and I'm sorry you're having an issue. We haven't heard any reports of story items going missing from authors' accounts, and we're not aware of any issues like this. 

Is it possible the student was logged in with a different account while creating the story map? We've heard of situations where a student is using a lab computer or someone else's computer where someone else is logged in when they start working. In that case their story would be saved in someone else's account, so when they log on later with their own account they wouldn't see it.

[LucZwartjes1]

I have the same problem with one of my students.

Very frustrating as she has had it already twice.

She uses a public account (via gmail) and wwhen she logs in there is no story anymore

Hw can she recover it?

[OwenGeo]

Hi Luc -- I'm sorry you have a student reporting a missing story. Does she have any information about the story like the link or title? If she published the story to everyone before it disappeared you can try to locate it by search.

We haven't been able to reproduce this issue where a story is created and then no longer appears in someone's account, but we've noticed a pattern that this issue is almost exclusively reported by students. We know that students often use public computers or a friend's laptop, so we have reason to believe these cases are caused by the student inadvertently creating a story in someone else's account when using a computer others are using to do work on ArcGIS Online. When they log into their own account later they don't see their story since it was created in a different account.

Our current advice is to reiterate to students that they should ensure they are logged in with their own account before starting to do any work on ArcGIS Online, and also be sure to always log out when they complete work on a shared computer.

If you or the student has any other information about the specific steps or conditions that led to this situation, please share them with us and we can investigate further.

[LucZwartjes1]

Hi Owen,

yes she did publish it, title of her story was my story of my life

her username is lissy.vervaeke@gmail.com

thanks for the help

[OwenGeo]

I don't see any public content items owned by that user account.

https://www.arcgis.com/home/search.html?q=owner%3Alissy.vervaeke%40gmail.com 

There are no public stories with the title "my story of my life, but some match "story of my life." Could it be one of these?

https://www.arcgis.com/home/search.html?q=%22story%20of%20my%20life%22&focus=applications-storymap

[OwenGeo]

Looks like this might be it?

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/e839cf3f07924c6f853c3e62f0d88f4d

That item is owned by this account: https://www.arcgis.com/home/user.html?user=lissyvervaeke 

[LucZwartjes1]

Hi Owen 
Yes that's correct, and now I heard what happened:

when she tried to make a public account with het gmail, she got a fault message (although now that account seems to work).

so she made a new account, but today forgot that she used the new one.

sorry for this, it is indeed a simple question of mismatch of user names.

But she found out on time to do the presentation.

Thanks for all the help

Luc

[OwenGeo]

OK, no problem -- glad the story turned up!!

[CharlieFitzpatrick]

Owen this is a really important contribution ... that such problems are often presented by students. Many students, even before college, are tempted to make accounts, not recognizing the importance of public vs Org, which generates a cascade of issues.

Tom Baker‌ Joseph Kerski‌