Website Pub File Corrupted

[victorsm]

The .pub file for my website is corrupted and I do not have a good backup
file. I can download the published files from the web server and that is all
I have. Is there any way to load the published server files back into MS
Publisher and recreate the .pub file? I could sure use some help on this
one.

 

[DavidF]

Reference: Common Sense Computing 101 aka "Why in the world would you lose
your publisher file?" :
http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/archive/2006/01/19/81461.aspx
After a lot of good information about backing up, you will see a way to
rebuild your Pub file at the end of the article.

DavidF

 

[Don Schmidt]

This is your baptism of fire; you'll need to rebuild the site in Publisher.
You probably could do some Copy/Pasting from the html files.

I had a five page site I thought I wouldn't need the pub file after building
the site so I deleted it. A lesson remembered.

 

[Spike]

As a practice I create a folder on the web server named pub_files (or
something like that) then when I finish a modification to the site I copy
the pub file from my hard drive to the web server. Aha a backup!

Spike

 

[John G]

I am afraid I do not believe all that about copying and selecting and
pasting into a pub file in the David Bartosik article.

My site (which you have seen, DavidF) has NO associated PUB file
anywhere on my computers or any where else.
Pub 2003 opens the index.htm file and after editing it saves both the
index.htm file and the Index_FILES folder.

I just downloaded these items using an FTP (WS_FTP) from one of the
locations and edited (with PUB) the downloaded index.htm.
Resaved it , Uploaded it and you can see the modified one at
http://johngriff.com/index.htm and the unmodified version at
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~john.griffiths/index.htm
Look at the last page called Blank to see that I added a graphic (Wot a
graphic?) and it is happilly there and the links to other files also
work Ok.

Normally both of these sites are the same and the links lead to files in
other places

 

[DavidF]

John,

Thanks. So you are saying that you don't work from a Publisher file at all?
How do you get the navbar wizard to work when you want to add another page?

Nice picture...or should I say, Wot a picture?

DavidF

 

[John G]

David,
For some reason Insert page never worked well on that site but it is not
just because there is no pub file.
If you go to http://johngriff.com/tmp2/ you will find a new file
Publication1.htm and Publication1_files
They were a clean new Pub 2003 saved as htm and when retrieved from the
server they could be modified and pages added and the nav bar wizard
works Partly.

No matter what I do with a NEW web page(using 2003 or 2007) the bottom
navbar NEVER works although the wizard adds entries there when it adds
pages, only the left side bar links work. Even without saving anything
and only looking at WEB PAGE PREVIEW this is the case. I think I have
seen you mention this before but cannot remember the details.

 

[DavidF]

John,

I think I see what you are doing now, and why you are having some success in
just editing the html code in Publisher.

When you go to http://johngriff.com/tmp2/ and compare the file sizes of the
three test sites, you get your first clue. Notice that the 2007 file is only
44kb, while the other two are much larger at 303 kb and 406 kb? I am betting
that when you produced the html code for the Pub 2007 site, you did a
"Publish to the Web", but when you used Pub 2007 you did a "Save As" a web
page? "Save As" a web page is the proper way of doing it in Pub 2000, and
"Export As" in Pub 2002. At least MSFT has been consistent between 2003 and
2007.

When you "Publish to the Web", the Publisher html coding engine produces
"filtered" html code, or the lightest cleanest code possible. When you do a
"Save As", Publisher produces "Rich" code or a "heavy page" that contains
Office tags and coding that allows you to open the .htm files in Pub and
edit them. You can't do the same thing with filtered pages, but the file
sizes are a lot smaller and load faster. You can see the difference in all
the lines of code if you View > Source.

I think it is these "Rich" pages with the heavy code that gives Publisher
web sites such a bad rep for code bloat. This is part of what Rob was
commenting on when he suggested that Publisher "excreted" its code. ;-). And
you can see the point. The difference between 44 and 303 kb is huge. I hope
Rob catches this thread so he can see an example of how Publisher can
produce code that isn't as bloated as it used to be.

I also suspect that you are using FireFox or some other browser as your
default, given your comment about the bottom navbar. The links work in IE,
but don't in FF, Opera and probably Safari. Tis a bug. One workaround is to
ungroup the bottom navbar from the side navbar. Just select it, Arrange,
ungroup. Now the links will work, but the navbar won't be updated if you add
a page...you will have to do it manually. You also have to do it on each
page if I remember correctly.

Anyway, if you want to continue doing it the way you are, then that is up to
you. The one big draw back I see might be that you can only work on one page
at a time, and the pages will be heavier. However, given that your web page
code is in "rich" code, it won't be hard for you to assemble a Pub file if
you choose, or break the pages up into separate Pub files and manage your
site that way. Anyway, if you want more details on that, let me know.

Thanks for taking the time to make and publish those example sites.

DavidF

 

[DavidF]

Whoops...I meant when you produced the Pub 2003 pages you did a Save
As...not 2007, such as:
http://johngriff.com/tmp2/Publication1.htm
This is one of the heavy pages.

DavidF

 

[John G]

David,
I only started this because I believed it was possible to get your
index.htm and your index_files back from the web if you lost your local
files and I think I can say that both the bloated files and the filtered
files can be brought back and edited. And NO *.Pub file need ever exist
on your local drive. Oh! Yes the big one is Saved AS and the small one
is
Publish to the WEB .

As for the Nav bar, the bottom bar NEVER works in either Pub2003 or 2007
either when the default browser is IE7 or Firefox.

BUT if a new page is constructed using PUB2002 (TWO) then both the side
and bottom Nav bars work and can be added to.

I do not currently have a problem, I am just discussing and exploring
some parts of Pub for Web site gneration. Thank you for replying.

 

[DavidF]

John,

Yes, you can download the html files, and open them with Pub 2002+. And you
can do minor edits on each page, but you are doing that in a Publisher file
on your local hard drive, albeit a temp file. You are creating a Pub file
when you open and convert the .htm files in Publisher. Then you create new
code...new .htm files when you Publish to the web. You aren't editing the
code directly such as you could do if you opened the .htm file in NotePad or
FrontPage or other code editors.

However, unless you rebuild your site in the Pub file, you will never be
able to do major changes to your site, add pages, move pages, or get the
navbar to work correctly as the Pub html coding engine writes relative links
to each page and each graphic. Open just the home page in Publisher and add
a new page, and that page will conflict with the original second page of
your site when you try to create new html. Minor edits by downloading and
opening individual .htm pages, and creating temporary Pub files to do the
edit, and producing new html files...yes. Major edits of your whole site and
navigation system, no. Not without rebuilding your Publisher file as
indicated in David Bartosik's article. The ability to download and open
individual .htm files in Pub 2002+ is a good thing, but it is not
recommended as a standard way of managing and maintaining a Publisher
website. You should do that from a Pub file on your local computer.

I don't know what to say about your experience with the bottom navbar other
than what I have said. I view your main site http://johngriff.com/ with IE
6, FF and Opera and the bottom navbar links are active and working now. Are
you saying that they don't work in IE 7? I would guess that if you choose to
download the html files and "edit" them one page at a time as you propose,
then that is likely to break any wizard built navbar eventually. I don't
know of any other reason why your bottom navbar would not work correctly in
IE 7.

Thanks.

DavidF

 

[John G]

David,
Please see some comments in context below.

John,

Yes, you can download the html files, and open them with Pub 2002+.
And you can do minor edits on each page, but you are doing that in a
Publisher file on your local hard drive, albeit a temp file. You are
creating a Pub file when you open and convert the .htm files in
Publisher. Then you create new code...new .htm files when you Publish
to the web. You aren't editing the code directly such as you could do
if you opened the .htm file in NotePad or FrontPage or other code
editors.

I never meant to imply you could edit the HTML code as you can in
Notepad etc, only that you could modify pages as you could originally in
Pub. There doese not appear to be any tmp files on disk at this time and
certainly there is no PUB file left afterwards unless you specificaly
save one.
More below!

However, unless you rebuild your site in the Pub file, you will never
be able to do major changes to your site, add pages, move pages, or
get the navbar to work correctly as the Pub html coding engine writes
relative links to each page and each graphic. Open just the home page
in Publisher and add a new page, and that page will conflict with the
original second page of your site when you try to create new html.
Minor edits by downloading and opening individual .htm pages, and
creating temporary Pub files to do the edit, and producing new html
files...yes. Major edits of your whole site and navigation system, no.
Not without rebuilding your Publisher file as indicated in David
Bartosik's article. The ability to download and open individual .htm
files in Pub 2002+ is a good thing, but it is not recommended as a
standard way of managing and maintaining a Publisher website. You
should do that from a Pub file on your local computer.

Yes the more I experiment with this the more confused I become about
what you get from BIG files or Filtered files. So as this started in an
attempt to get some pages back for the OP I think I will drop it for
now.
More below!

I don't know what to say about your experience with the bottom navbar
other than what I have said. I view your main site
http://johngriff.com/ with IE 6, FF and Opera and the bottom navbar
links are active and working now. Are you saying that they don't work
in IE 7? I would guess that if you choose to download the html files
and "edit" them one page at a time as you propose, then that is likely
to break any wizard built navbar eventually. I don't know of any other
reason why your bottom navbar would not work correctly in IE 7.

The Nav Bar problem seems to be very repeatable.
http://johngriff.com/ was started with PUB2002 and yes the bottom bar
works but I don't think I can do much with it now and don't really want
to change it at the moment.

A page started in PUB 2002 will have both side and Bottom Nav bars work
OK in any? browser.

A page started in PUB 2003 or 2007 only the side Nav Bar works and the
bottom nav bar NEVER works in IE6 or 7 or Firefox or Opera.

These last experiments were done just starting a FRESH new web page,
adding a couple of pages and looking at WEB PREVIEW on 2 computers
where the results were identical.

I have known this for a long time but never botherd persuing it and
could easily drop it now or I am happy to continue the discussion in a
thread started for that purpose.

 

[DavidF]

Hi John,

I think we have flogged this horse enough for now. Thanks for your comments
and perspective.

DavidF