Formatting problems from 2003 to 2007

[Kristen]

I had been working on an Internet Newsletter in MS Publisher 2003 and it was
almost done when my company updated us to the new 2007 Office. Now when I
open my document it looks ok but when someone with an older version opens it,
the formatting is different. I also tried sending it to my hotmail account
but the formatting looks even worse.
How do I fix this?

 

[DavidF]

When you say that you open your document, are you talking about opening it
in Publisher or viewing it in an email client? Outlook 2007 is very
different than Outlook 2003, with different security settings. And if you
have been "updated' to Vista, then you also have very different settings and
IE 7.

The problem with sending an html formatted email newsletter is that it is
likely to look different depending on the email client that views it.
Hotmail will look different than AOL. If the email client has html or images
disabled, once again, your newsletter will be different. It is hard to
impossible to get an html formatted email to look the same in all email
clients, and thus you would be better off if you created a PDF version of
the newsletter, and attached it. That version will look the same to
everyone.

Alternatively, if you insist on a html formatted email you need to keep it
simple. Reference the tips and especially the formatting suggestions in this
article, redesign your newsletter, and test until it looks good in all
clients:

Tips and troubleshooting for sending a publication page as an e-mail message
(2003):
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HP010390591033.aspx?pid=CH062524821033

DavidF

 

[Kristen]

When I go file- send email- email preview the preview I see isn't the same as
what I've created. In the preview it appears to show a black line that goes
through 2 of my text boxs. I emailed it to someone with outlook 2003 they see
this line however, in 2007 I do not. I tried using a PDF however the links
don't work once I've email it because it needs to be in the message.

Any ideas?

Is publisher just the wrong program to use to create an internet newsletter?

 

[DavidF]

As to the extra line, and the formatting challenges in general, I would
suggest that you look at the link I provided last time on Tips and
especially formatting. It is very restrictive as to what you can and cannot
do with an html formatted email. You would need to "deconstruct" your
newsletter by removing and changing things around until you got it to the
point where it would look the same in both Outlook 2007 and 2003, and even
then, it is likely to look different in other email clients. And if the
person that receives it has html disabled, they won't be able to view it at
all.

If you were to ask whether you should use Publisher to create an "internet
newsletter", you would probable get almost 100% saying that you shouldn't.
Personally I think it has its place, but given the challenges of dummying
down the newsletter so that it looks ok, I still think that a PDF is the
best way to go. For that matter, I really don't want to read a long
newsletter in an email client. I would much prefer a PDF on multiple pages,
like a print version. The good news is that with the Publisher PDF add-in,
your hyperlinks WILL work after converting to PDF. This was one of the
welcome changes in 2007. You do have to select the text, go to Insert >
Hyperlink and insert the link properly, but then when viewing the PDF in
even my old version of the Adobe Reader 6, the link does work.

One caveat, right now the email links in the PDF has a bug, so until they
fix that, you should probably just instruct people to reply to the message
in order to contact you, or key-in the whole email address so people can
copy and paste it into their email client. Hopefully they will fix the bug
with the email links in the next service patch.

If it were me, I would create my newsletter, and even consider using one of
the print formatted versions without the restrictions of what you can do if
you want to include it in the message. And then in the message I would write
a brief introduction to what is contained in the attached newsletter. You
could even add some pictures, your logo, a banner, your contact information,
or other "design elements" or a background or stationary to the email
message body to make it a bit more fancy than a plain vanilla email message.
At least this way even if the person has html disabled, they will be able to
read the text. I would also use the minimum size setting for the PDF, rather
than the print quality. This will keep the file size down to a minimum, and
thus not alienate...tick off, the dial-up connected people you send it to.
Don't forget that a 1 meg email takes about 5 minutes to download if you are
on dial-up.

If you have a website, then you could also consider uploading the majority
of your newsletter content there, and just link to that content from the
email. If you study the templates that MSFT provides, I think that is what
they intended with the "read more..." links after the introductory comments.

In general, I think that you will see more and more restrictions and
increased security that will make sending html formatted email more
difficult. It is a good time to figure out alternatives, and that is why I
would use the PDF.

DavidF