Publisher saving issue?

Question

I have created a very large (80) page document using Publisher 2016. Everything has gone smoothly until just the last couple of days.  I save the document to an Elements storage and to a regular usb storage for safety;  and when I open it on my new laptop it doesn't load the entire document - actually loads all the pages, but not all of the pictures on the pages.  A big red X is on the pictures toward the end of the document.  As the document loads the pictures thoughout the document disappear and reappear. The strange thing is, when I open the file on my old Windows 7 computer it opens just fine, just really slow, the only issue is some of the fonts are not recognized and some of the text boxes are off.  I removed and reloaded Office 2016 and no different. I opened the document using the Office 365 that came on the computer, no difference.  Why would this happen on one computer and not another?

Answer 1

What version of Publisher are you running on your Win7 machine? Newer versions of Publisher tend to choke on large picture files. Opening and saving to removable media and network drives can also corrupt Publisher files. While tedious, it is safer to open from and save to your local hard drive and then copy to your external drives.

Make a backup copy of a Pub file on the local hard drive to test, reboot, maximize the available resources, and then open the Pub file and compress all the pictures: Reference: Picture tool Tab - Compress Pictures (2010): https://support.office.com/en-US/Article/Picture-Tools-Tab-1d2e8f37-922c-4032-b1c0-56c13ca50533?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#__toc256694329

You can also try compressing the picture files via the Win7 machine before you copy that file over to your Win10 machine.

The problem you are having with the Win7 machine rendering the page and text boxes differently than the Win10 machine is because MSFT introduced a new set of fonts as of Win8 that render ~5% different in size. This throws off the spacing of your text in the text boxes. This has been discussed extensively in this forum and I can provide links to many threads that discuss this issue if you want them. However, the bottom line has been that the only workaround for Publisher users moving from a Win7 (or older) machine to a Win10 (or Win8) machine is to copy the same fonts to the other machine. In the past users were copying Win7 fonts to their Win8 or Win10 machines in order to use all their old Publisher files and avoid being forced to tweak the layout of all those legacy files. If you want to keep moving from a Win7 to a Win10 machine and given how much time passed since this issue came to light, I would suggest that going the other direction might be the best approach now.

You can try this experiment: On your Win7 machine, backup just the specific Win7 fonts you are using in the Pub test file.  If it were me I would then just change the font file extensions in the font folder to *.old from *.TTF which would allow me to just change back if this experiment does not work. Then copy over and install those specific Win10 fonts onto the Win7 machine. Reboot and open the test file from the local hard drive and the Win7 machine should now render the text as the Win10 machine did. You will need to tweak the text boxes to work with the Win10 fonts, save the edited Win 7 file, copy to your Win10 machine and it should render the file correctly.  If it works and the Win10 fonts do not cause some other unintended conflict on your Win7 machine then you can copy over more Win10 fonts as needed. The only drawback in this approach is that you will have to tweak all your legacy Win 7 Pub files to render correctly using the Win10 fonts. After that you will be able to move between the two machines without needing to tweak the text boxes each time.

If you do try replacing the Win7 fonts with Win10 fonts, please post back with your experience. Like I said, many users found copying their Win7 fonts to Win8 and Win10 machines worked, but no user has tried the other direction and posted about it. It would be good to know if a user can install the Win10 fonts on their Win7 machines and successfully workaround this issue.

DavidF