You receive a "Visio could not find this template" error message when you use the Visio 2003 SDK to publish certain custom components in Visio 2003

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SYMPTOMS

When you use the Microsoft Office Visio 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK) to publish certain custom components such as stencils and templates in Visio 2003, these custom components are not correctly published. After you publish these custom components, the custom components may appear under Drawing Types together with a blue icon for the preview of the template. Additionally, if you try to open one of these templates, you receive the following error message:

Visio could not find this template. An error occurred and this feature is no longer functioning properly. Would you like to repair this feature now?

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CAUSE

This issue occurs because the Microsoft Windows Installer (.msi) file that you use to publish custom components uses short file names for the component file names.

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WORKAROUND

To work around this issue, modify the .msi file to use long file names in the PublishComponent table instead of short file names for the components. Alternatively, you can reduce the length of the custom component file names and use short file names in the PublishComponent table.

For more information about how to use long file names and short file names in an .msi file, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa368590.aspx (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa368590.aspx)

For more information about Windows Installer, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370921.aspx (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370921.aspx)

For more information about the Windows Installer PublishComponent table for Visio 2003, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

832029 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832029/ ) Description of the Windows Installer PublishComponent table for Visio 2003

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MORE INFORMATION

Visio 2003 provides support for publishing custom components such as templates, stencils, add-ons, and Help files by using a Windows Installer file. The Windows Installer PublishComponent table lets you include details in an .msi file about the custom components that you want to publish.

You can use the Visio Solution Publishing tool that is included in the Visio 2003 SDK to add component details to the PublishComponent table in the .msi file. By default, the Visio Solution Publishing tool uses short file names for the components when you add entries in the PublishComponent table. Sometimes, when you have components to publish that have long file names in the .msi file, the short file names and the original file names of the components do not match. When you publish these components, you may see that the names of the installed component files differ from the names of the original component files. Therefore, the components are not published correctly, and you receive the error message that is mentioned in the "Symptoms" section when you try to open the custom component.

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