Publisher 2003 Problems

I have 2 concerns. The first is that Publisher 2003
seems very unstable compared to Publisher XP. It
continues to give me blank screens whenever I add 3
dimensional text, but didn't do this in the XP version.
I noticed that there is an Office 2000 sr-1??? update,
but do I need that since I'm running Office 2003? Will
it help w/the stability or did I screw up by upgrading?

Last concern, Publisher XP would let me make images
transparent and place them on top of other images, but it
never printed that way. The "transparency" portion that
was seen on the screen would show up as a complete color
(normally white) when I would print. Was hoping
Publisher 2003 would have fixed this, but I'm still
having the same problem. Any advice?