You may receive an error message or the Publisher icon becomes generic or no longer appears in the Start menu when you start an Office program

When you use any of the Microsoft Office XP or Microsoft Office 2000 programs, you may notice one or more of the following behaviors:

• Publisher document icons are displayed as generic icons.
• Microsoft Publisher is no longer displayed under Programs on the Start menu.
• When you start any Office 2000 program, you may receive an error message similar to the following:
  There was a problem starting the Office Assistant. Would you like to try reinstalling it?
• When you start Microsoft Publisher 2002, you may receive an error message similar to the following:
  Error 1706: Setup cannot find the required files. Check your connection to the network, or CD-ROM drive. For other potential solutions to this problem, see C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\1033\SETUP.HLP.

This behavior occurs when both of the following conditions are true:

• Publisher 2002 was custom-installed to co-exist with Publisher 2000.
• One of the two versions of Publisher was then removed (uninstalled).

When one version of Publisher is removed while co-existing with another version of Publisher, the Office Setup program removes the Office Assistant files and disassociates the .pub file extension from the MSPub.exe file.

To work around this issue, use one or more of the following methods, as needed.

Method 1: Restore the Office Assistant in Office 2000 Programs

1. Start any Office 2000 program.
2. When you receive the following error message
   There was a problem starting the Office Assistant. Would you like to try reinstalling it?
   click Yes.

Method 2: Restore the Office Assistant in Office XP Programs

• Start any Office XP program. Office XP Setup should automatically reinstall the missing Office Assistant files.

Method 3: Restore Publisher 2000 or Publisher 2002 Icons and Start Menu Items

1. Start Windows Explorer.
2. Double-click any Publisher document.
3. If the Open With dialog box appears, click Microsoft Publisher in the Choose the program you want to use list, and then click OK. The Office Setup should start, and it should automatically repair Publisher.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

If you remove one version of Publisher, this removes the file association between the .pub file extension and MSPub.exe. If you re-associate the .pub extension with MSPub.exe, this does not completely fix the problem.