Publisher 2003 & IE 8

[Joe]

I created a web site www.fera.org using Publisher 2003. Lately people using
IE8 do not see the menues along the left side, or the bottom. People using
Chrome are just fine. Is the a compatibility issue between IE 8 & Publisher
2003?

 

[DavidF]

There is a compatibility issue with IE8 and Publisher 2003 and 2007. 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 or section to
your site, you can leave the navbar ungrouped and skip the step of saving a
copy.

Publisher 2007 can be fixed manually or 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

Some users have found SP2 breaks Publisher, and makes it impossible to open
existing Pub files...you know, break one thing to fix another, so there is a
hotfix for that:

Description of the Publisher 2007 hotfix package (Publisher.msp): June 30,
2009
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972566/

DavidF

 

[Joe]

Thanks David I'll give the work around a shot.

There is a compatibility issue with IE8 and Publisher 2003 and 2007. 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 or section to
your site, you can leave the navbar ungrouped and skip the step of saving a
copy.

Publisher 2007 can be fixed manually or 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

Some users have found SP2 breaks Publisher, and makes it impossible to open
existing Pub files...you know, break one thing to fix another, so there is a
hotfix for that:

Description of the Publisher 2007 hotfix package (Publisher.msp): June 30,
2009
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972566/

DavidF

 

[Mal]

Microsoft in their instructions says for 2003 Publisher users to upgrade to
2007 to do the manual fix. Will the ungrouping solution on it's own not work
for Publisher 2003?

 

[DavidF]

If you don't trust my instructions, then why not just try it and see?

DavidF
\

 

[ChuckC]

If you don't trust my instructions, then why not just try it and see?

DavidF
\

 

[ChuckC]

If you don't trust my instructions, then why not just try it and see?

DavidF
\

 

[ChuckC]

Instead of all this nonsense, how about posting a fix to Publisher.
Apparently you know what to do since you did it for 2007.

 

[DavidF]

Sorry for the confusion, but the 'fix' for both Pub 2003 and 2007 are
contained within my first post in response to Joe. Basically you can
manually ungroup all the elements with both 2003 and 2007, or the Office
2007 SP2 patch will fix Pub 2007 without the need to manually ungroup the
elements. Please read my first post in this thread if you have further
questions.

DavidF

 

[Ed Bennett]

Instead of all this nonsense, how about posting a fix to Publisher.
Apparently you know what to do since you did it for 2007.

a) DavidF does not work for Microsoft. He has no power to fix anything.
He's a volunteer who gives up his free time to try and help people he's
never met.

b) Even support engineers cannot change software; that's what program
manages and programmers do. So even if you were talking to a Microsoft
support representative, they could only tell you how to work around a
problem; they couldn't fix the code.

c) Microsoft prioritises bug fixes. The older the software, the less
likely it is it will get fixed/the more catastrophic it has to be in
order to be fixed.

d) Publisher 2007 and Publisher 2003 are different programs. The fix
almost certainly can't simply be cut and pasted verbatim. (I am not a
Microsoft employee in any capacity, let alone a programmer with access
to the Publisher code base, so I can't check.) Even if it could, all
changes to software require vast amounts of testing to check whether
they break other functionality; often the benefit of the fix outweighs
the mammoth task of testing it. (Even with testing, sometimes some
regressions slip through - for instance the recent catastrophe with
opening files with linked Excel objects in 2007 SP2. Sadly Microsoft of
late has a very poor track record of handling these.)