Help! Trying to update my website

[Dolphinia]

I use Publisher 2007 to create and publish my website. I have uploaded files
to my ftp (wsftp) and updated my site. HOWEVER, when I get my friends to
look at it from their computers, there are differing problems:

E.g. (1) When I open my site from my browser (IE8. Vista OS) - on my first
page I cannot see my navigation buttons (only the words that are on the
buttons with the alternative text) and two of my images. All I see in place
of the button is the outline of the button with the small red x in the upper
left hand corner. Then there is a small text box with an announcement in it
with links. These links work fine when viewed from my browser. I have a
couple of friends who are having these same issues when they look at my site.

(2) Other friends are seeing the navigation buttons correctly, and the two
images, but the links with the small text box with the announcement are not
working.

All of the other links on this page (the index page) are working just fine.

What is going on? I have no idea how to fix this when different browsers
appear to be having different issues. Help would be so very much
appreciated. I am on a time line with posting the announcements, so any help
given quickly will be a lifesaver!

Thanks so much

 

[David Bartosik]

connect to your web server and delete all the site files. make sure
everything is gone. after that publish the new version. that'll likely
clear things up. I recommend a full delete before every update.

 

[DavidF]

In addition to what David Bartosik said, one part of your problem is an
incompatibility with IE8 .

While IE8 has had a lot of issues with compatibility with existing websites,
the one compatibility issue with Publisher 2003 and 2007 webs and IE8 RTW
reported thus far are problems associated with 'grouping'. Any design
elements that are 'grouped' together, which includes the Publisher wizard
built navbars, do not render when you view the web page in IE8 . The fix in
general is to ungroup the elements. There is both a manual fix to these
issues and a Service Patch that has been issued to fix it for Pub 2007.

Reference: Navigation bars and other content is missing from Publisher HTML
output in Internet Explorer 8: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969705

A manual method of fixing this grouping issue:

Prior to uploading your pages find all text boxes and other design elements
that are grouped together and ungroup. You can save those changes to your
publication. Then make a copy of your publication by doing a 'File > Save
As' and in this copy go to each page > Edit > Select All > Arrange >
Ungroup. This will ungroup the Publisher built navbar and disconnect it from
the wizard, and the navbars will render correctly in IE8. 'Publish to the
Web' from this copy of your publication. When you want to make further
changes in your web, go back to the original Publisher file, make the
corrections there, save your changes, and again make a copy, ungroup the
navbars and produce new web files for uploading. The advantage of this
workflow is that you will not have to rebuild the navbar if you choose to
add a page to the navbar. If you do not need to add a page, you can leave
the navbar ungrouped and skip the step of saving a copy.

This is also fixed with the Office 2007 SP2: Reference: Description of 2007
Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of Microsoft Office Language
Pack 2007 SP2: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=953195

The usual caveat also applies. While I would never recommend to anyone that
they not install any security or service patch, when you install service
patches there can be unintended consequences. You might fix one thing only
to break something else and there have been people who have posted about
problems opening existing Publisher files after installing the Office 2007
SP2.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=953195 lists some of the other known
issues along with some of the things this patch fixes in Office 2007
applications.

However there is a hotfix for this now. Description of the Publisher 2007
hotfix package (Publisher.msp): June 30, 2009
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972566/
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/972632

And in a worse case scenario, if you do have problems after installing SP2:
Microsoft Service Pack and the hotfix doesn't fix it: Uninstall Tool for the
2007 Microsoft Office suite:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954914/en-us

As per the "...small text box with an announcement in it with links..." not
rendering correctly, this might also be a result of grouping, but is more
likely a result of the fill color in the text box, or perhaps the border.
What browser are your friends using? If you provide a link to the page where
you have the problem we can probably tell you how to fix it.

DavidF