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General discussion

Publisher 03 docs open as Word, just get gibberish

Jun 30, 2010 10:07AM PDT

I recently bought a new computer with Windows 7 x64 and installed my Office 2003 and SP3. Saved Publisher docs appear to be stuck in Word (and the "W" icon is different). Any Publisher docs I try to open attempt to open as Word and come up gibberish. I have attempted to correct the association and "open with" but Publisher is not listed as an option. Any ideas???

Discussion is locked

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Just to confirm
Jun 30, 2010 8:57PM PDT

1] Does this Office 2003 include the Publisher application? It is a retail optional extra when you purchase Office.

2] Another thought. Did this new Windows 7 arrive with a "Trial period" version of Office 2007 installed as part of the OEM package? If so the general advice is to uninstall all trial versions before installing retail versions.

If the answer to 1 is Yes, and the answer to 2 is No, then when you try to "Open with", can you 'Browse' to the Publisher executable file?

Mark

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More info
Jul 10, 2010 12:34AM PDT

Thank you for responding. This disk comes with 7 office programs including Publisher, on a "home use only" disk I got thru the military. The Windows 7 (this is supposed to be a lucky number, right?) did come with a trial version which I deleted after I discovered the problem the first time, and then reinstalled 03 to no avail. The prob exists before and after I download SP3, makes no difference. When I attempt to "open with", the only option in the list is Word. If I go to "browse" nothing in the list makes sense. Someone suggested a scratch on the disk, looks clean to me but could try having it resurfaced. I would try it on my wife's computer but I have exhausted the three installs (it worked fine on the previous installs). It seems these files are definitely attempting to associate with Word, even under the files' Properties they "open with" Word, but I just don't see a way for them to recognize Publisher. I just now discovered that if I open Publisher first, then browse in the left pane to find a file, it will open the file properly, but not the other way around. So at least now I have access to the files. Any other suggestions?

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May be another suggestion.
Jul 10, 2010 5:24AM PDT

You've established that Publisher exists on this computer where you said that if you open Publisher first, so that's good news. Many retail Office disks do not include Publisher.

Also, you have a work around. That's good too, even if not ideal.

But that could lead to a solution.

When you use Open With, then Browse, what you are looking for is the publisher.exe file. It may not be called publisher.exe, but some other .exe name, so try this.

The method you used to open Publisher is probably using a shortcut, either a shortcut icon on your Desktop, or the shortcut link in the Start menu bubble > All programs list. Whichever one you use, right click that shortcut, then select Properties. In one of the tabs in the window that displays you will see the name of the file this shortcut opens, and also the Path, or Location, to it.

Now you have that information, find a publisher file, right click, select 'Open with' and browse to that location and find that file given by the shortcut. Select that, and see if it makes Publisher open this file.

If so, close it down, repeat the process to see if there is an option in "Open with" to "Always use this application to open this file type".

Does that work?

Mark

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Found the solution
Jul 15, 2010 11:57AM PDT

Tried looking under Location as you suggested but nothing was listed. Went back to a file "Properties" and "Open with" and put in where the file is supposed to be "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office" which brought up a list of 5 items I didn't recognize so I opened each one of them and under the one called OFFICE11, there is a long list of programs and ***SURPRISE*** Publisher was in the list. I selected it and now all my Publisher files are associated correctly. Good grief, don't know why it was lost before but now it's found. Thanks!

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(NT) That's great, and congratulations for getting it sorted.
Jul 15, 2010 7:30PM PDT