Latest Contributions by OwenGeo

@Amanda__Huber -- Yes! The outline groups blocks according to the headings in the story. If you drag the heading in the outline, all the blocks within that section are moved together. Thanks for updating this thread, @PeterKnoop! For more about the outline, see What's new in ArcGIS StoryMaps (May 2026) and Story outline | ArcGIS StoryMaps Help. We are also thinking about being able to individually select and move multiple blocks in the outline as a further convenience as a future enhancement. However, if you need to move a subset of blocks from within a section, you can now much more easily move them individually with the outline or even add a temporary heading to group them so you can move them together. I'm going to close this idea as implemented since outline covers the original request to move a section of content. If you think the ability to individually select blocks to move is important, please submit a new idea for that. ... View more

Oops, sorry -- my mistake! There was discussion about making the replacement item available for any item (not just retired ones), but it looks like that is not the case yet. If that was available, would you use that instead of editing the URL? ... View more

@PeterKnoop - Thanks for sharing this idea! You have pointed out a place where there is inconsistency in what happens between ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS StoryMaps, and we will look into this. But for this use case I think the recommended workflow would be to set a replacement item. This provides a better experience for redirecting viewers to a new piece of content and makes sure they are aware that they are going to a different web page than their bookmark or link may have pointed to. Replacement items are typically thought of only for retired items, like classic story maps, but they can be configured for any item. Would that be something you could adopt to meet your needs in this case? Set a replacement item—ArcGIS Online Help | Documentation   ... View more

The word count and other summary information about a story is available in the Story insights panel. To show this panel, click Insights in the story builder header. For more information, see Using the ArcGIS StoryMaps AI assistant to your benefit.     ... View more

@Sarahjoy94 - I'm sorry you are having an issue with the buttons in your story. There are no restrictions on student accounts that would cause this to happen, and this sounds like a different issue than the one reported above.  The behavior you describe is what happens when there is no URL saved for the button. If you hover over the button and the "Open in a new tab" tool is disabled that means there is no URL saved (see screenshot). After you click the Edit/pencil icon and paste in the URL, make sure you press ENTER to save the pasted URL. Let us know if that works for you.   ... View more

@SaraJL - The update to the style of the button mentioned above was deployed in yesterday's release. We are also testing some additional changes to try to further minimize the chances of lost work: 1) We are looking to add more friction and prevent accidentally clicking the wrong button. The overwrite option will not be clickable unless you first check the acknowledgement box. 2) We are also working on detecting "stale" builder sessions. This is a browser tab where someone has the builder open that they leave and come back to after a period of time. In those cases we'll require the author to exit the builder if changes have been made by others (so they won't even see an option to overwrite changes). They can then reopen the story in builder to load the latest draft so they can continue editing from there. Please let us know your thoughts on these changes. ... View more

@Crystal_Cowardin - We made a change in yesterday's update that may resolve the issue you were seeing in your accessibility testing. As mentioned above, the story you shared is no longer available for us to test on. Please reshare the story and/or re-run your tests and let us know if the issues are resolved. ... View more

At this time, we do not have plans to make scale bar colors specifically customizable. But the scale bar colors are currently derived from your theme colors, and there is already a good amount of flexibility available to choose colors when you create a theme. We did, however, notice the scale bar text color was a bit lighter than the rest of the text in the credits bar, so in yesterday's release, the colors for the scale bar were adjusted to increase contrast. Please let us know if this improvement helps resolve some of the issues you noticed. ... View more

@DavidMedeiros  - Thanks for sharing this idea. I think you can accomplish something similar to the experience you are looking for by using actions. Actions are buttons or links that you add to the narrative panel that trigger a change the media panel. They are basically like map choreography (the frozen media panel and scrolling narrative panel) without the scrolling. You can read more about actions here: Supercharge your stories with media actions Let us know if this works for you. ... View more

@BenjaminMittler - You mentioned the slide numbers are primarily so you can direct your workshop attendees to a specific slide. Are attendees following along with the briefing open in their browser? If so, the current slide number is shown in the toolbar at the top of the screen when someone views a briefing. Can attendees use that to go to the slide number you direct them to?   ... View more

Sorry, I thought this idea was in the StoryMaps board, but I see now that it is in the ArcGIS Online board, so am reopening. ... View more

@ZachLampert - When you publish a StoryMap, there is a QR code shown that will open your item, and the Copy link button on this screen provides a short URL for you to share, like this one: https://arcg.is/1man49 A version of this screen is also available by clicking the Share button in the header at the top right of the screen when viewing any publicly published story map (unless the author has turned it off in the settings). Please review these capabilities and let us know if they meet your needs.     ... View more