You may receive a "The initializestrings method returned the incorrect number of strings" error message when you use FrontPage 2003 to open the properties of a Web Part

In Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, when you try to edit a Web Part that is located on a page in your Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Web site, you may receive the following error message: As a result, you cannot view or edit the properties of the Web Part.

This problem may occur if the Web Part is located in a Windows SharePoint Services Web site that is located on a Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal. In this situation, you receive the error message that is described in the "Symptoms" section of this article when you open the Web site in FrontPage 2003 and then you try to view or to edit the properties of Web Parts that are contained in any Web pages of that Web site.

This problem is corrected in Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Service Pack 1.

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

To work around this problem, do one of the following as appropriate to your situation:

• Use a Web browser to edit the properties of Web Parts that are located on Windows SharePoint Services Web sites in the portal.
• Use FrontPage 2003 to first edit the properties of a Web Part that is located on a Web page in the portal. After you do so, open the Windows SharePoint Services Web site in FrontPage 2003, and then edit the Web Parts of the Windows SharePoint Services Web site that you want.
  
  Note You do not have to save the changes that you make to the Web Part of the portal that you edit. After you open the properties of the Web Part on a page in the portal, you can edit the Web Part that you want in the Windows SharePoint Services Web site.
  
  This method only works until the next time that the application pool in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) is recycled. By default, the application pool worker processes are recycled one time daily.
• Remove the following audience-targeting entry from the Web.config file of the portal:

  <RuntimeFilter Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, 
  PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" Class="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Audience.AudienceManager" 
  BuilderURL="audience_chooser.aspx"/>

  The portal Web.config file is located in the content folder of the virtual server. For example, for the Default Web site, the Web.config file may be located in the C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot folder.
  
  The AudienceManager class is the entry point for the audience feature in SharePoint Portal Server 2003, and provides an implementation of IRuntimeFilter that allows Web Parts and other content to be targeted to a specific audience. Note that when you remove this component, Web Parts are no longer targeted to a specific audience. For more information about the AudienceManager class, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms964945.aspx

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.
This problem was first corrected in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Service Pack 1.

For more information about SharePoint Portal Server, visit the following Microsoft Web site: For more information about Windows SharePoint Services, visit the following Microsoft Web site: For more information about FrontPage, visit the following Microsoft Web site: