Publisher file not opening after SP2 install

[Spike]

David

Another weird happening with this file. I opened it with 2002 and tried to
save it as 2000 and it locked up. It would be nice if someone can open it
in 2007 SP1 and try to save it as an earlier version. I even deleted all
the pages except page 1, removed all navbar remnants and still could not
save as 2000. As I removed pages the navbars did not self remove. (The
wizard lost his wiz) I had page 1 only and all the bars for the removed
pages still in the publication. I am wondering if the bars may be part of
the problem.

Spike

 

[DavidF]

Hi Spike,

Though you can in theory save down from Pub 2002, or even 2003 and 2007 to
Pub 2000 file format, it is probably not a solution in general. While you
can layer text boxes, image boxes, and object boxes in the newer versions,
when you do this in Pub 2000 it will simply combine all those design
elements into one big .gif file. You cannot layer design elements in Pub
2000. Also, Pub 2000 did not use organizing subfolders, so navbars and the
links would not convert correctly...and for that matter, Pub 2000 only
supported 10 buttons/links per navbar. There are also other differences in
how the formatting and in general how the html coding engines works, but
chances are this is why Publisher choked when you tried to Save As a Pub
2000 file. Furthermore even if you had been successful, the formatting
and/or the layout would have likely been messed up permanently when or if
you could open that Pub 2000 file in Pub 2007 again. Good idea perhaps for a
print publication, but probably not workable for a web publication...

DavidF

 

[Spike]

David

Thanks. So much to learn when you open a program and look at its amenities.
In this case it is probably best to toss the burnt toast and get out a new
fresh slice of bread.

Spike

 

[Tricky100]

Aghhhh, Same here, pushed out SP2 to my network this weekend, came in this
morning and users cannot open any Publisher 2007 files! same error as you.

 

[raykirkwood]

I have been in touch with ms tech support UK by telephone and email
(excellent service) for about 4 days on this matter. They have tried
out my files from Pub 2007 pre-SP2, which will not open in SP2 version
and my old 2003 files which do open in SP2! They have conffirmed there
is a reproducible bug in the SP2 patch affecting some, if not all
downloaded updates.

They have promised to let me know the result of my case (and others
they have collected) going to head office developers and have promised
to let me know when a fix is available.

Meanwhile, so I can use Publisher in SP1 version, I have taken the
steps successfully as shown in the report I sent to MS. Hope this is
useful to someone out there!

Dear MS Tech Support

As it seems it may take some time before we receive an updated SP2 for
Office, I have found a way to have the SP2 updates on all the office
programs except Publisher.

I eventually managed to use the command line uninstaller to revert the
whole suite back to SP1. It is one of the most awkward pieces of
software I have ever used and assumes quite a deep knowledge,
including how to navigate deeply into your PC using MS-DOS!

I have no idea how the average punter is expected to cope with such
software, with no GUI. If service packages are going to be so 'buggy'
in future (and there will always be such a chance), then please exhort
your masters to produce GUI driven uninstallers to go with them! I am
not sure that it was entirely necessary, but I found that as well as
running oarpman.exe with simple right click administrator privileges,
I needed to be in a command line window under the full hidden
administrator user, to get the log file to register and the program to
run. It is possible, however, that the problem had been simply that
the patch group code needed had a letter capital O at the start, which
I kept reading as a zero! It is all very small in a command window. My
point about needing a GUI.

I then uninstalled Publisher 2007 and then reapplied my downloaded SP2
file to the rest of the office suite to bring them back to the latest
version (which I have already found beneficial in Outlook -much faster
and more stable it seems). After restart, I reinstalled my original
standalone CD version of Publisher and all is well. I can now open all
my files with the original version.

For the time being, I am of course refusing any further SP2 update
offered.

I wish you all well with finding the bugs and look forward to hearing
when reliable new patches become available.

 

[DavidF]

Thank you for posting this additional information about the bugs associated
with the Office 2007 SP2. Please do us all a favor and post back if you get
any additional information.

DavidF