A set of tables are published for replication, when I have to unpublish the tables in order to update their structures (i.e. drop and recreate), an error comes up to say that the tables are still marked for replication. I check sysarticles and no tables are listed and even if I completely take the database off of replication, still there are problems. I have looked at the stored procedures that publish/unpublish the selected articles and see that a bit in sysobjects.category is set/unset by a constant of 32. But when unpublishing, it is like this does not work. I have to go into the sysobjects table renumber the category number and try again to drop/recreate and still the problem occurs, so I have to do this once more and then it will work. VERY FRUSTRATING and TIME CONSUMING. I find it hard to believe that this is how to maintain this. Does anyone have any ideas? I unpublish the articles through the replication interface, so it should work.

HELP PLEASE!!