Introduction
Activity instructions have a maximum size limit. If instructions exceed this, they'll fail to save with an error. This can happen for two different reasons:
- Too much text — the instructions are simply long. Straightforward to spot and fix by trimming content.
- Images pasted directly into the text — when an image is pasted in as part of a larger copy-paste action, it can get embedded as base64-encoded data rather than uploaded as a file. This inflates the underlying size massively without making the instructions look any longer on screen, so it's not obvious to the user what's wrong.
User Roles
Users with the Programme Manager and Programme Contributor roles.
How to resolve problems
- If the instructions are mostly text with no images, shorten the content.
- If images are present, check how they were added. If they were pasted in as part of a select-all-and-paste action, remove them and re-add using the copy image and paste method, detailed below.
- Save again once resolved.
Bud Recommends
- To add an image without bloating the file size: right-click the image at its source, select Copy Image, then paste it directly into the instructions field. Avoid selecting all content (text and image together) and pasting in one action, as this can embed the image as base64 data.
- Keep instructions concise and plainly worded. Long or dense instructions are harder for learners to follow, regardless of file size.