Toolbars and links not appearing to others

[computer novice]

I have two websites for my business (the main site and our competition team
site) that I built in Publisher 2003. Over the past couple of months, people
who have previously been able to use all the links in the sites no longer
can, particularly when they are using Vista or a browser like Mozilla. There
seems to be 2 main problems:

The links don't work when they click on them (mostly Mozilla Firefox people)
The toolbars (and a few links) have suddenly disappeared (Vista)

They have been able to use the features in the past, really up until the end
of this summer. Everything looks okay when I check the site from my computer
and from my phone internet so I am completely puzzled.

I make frequent updates to the sites, with links to pdf files and upcoming
events. I am not skilled in computers or familiar with computer lingo so I
am nervous about clearing all of the tools/options/web buttons. I don't want
to take something apart that I will have no idea how to reconstruct when I
need to make changes.

I called Microsoft to see if there was some sort of patch I needed to buy,
but they weren't much help.

Up until now, doing the website in Publisher has been easy and fun. HELP!

 

[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:

After making and saving any changes to your Pub file, and prior to uploading
new web files, 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/

If ungrouping your pages do not fix your issues, please repost in the
webdesign group along with links to your sites and we will try to help you
there.

news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.publisher.webdesign
or
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...soft.public.publisher.webdesign&lang=en&cr=US

DavidF

 

[computer novice]

Thank you! That seemed to do the trick.