Well, it turns out that I made a mistake. NOT FOR REPLICATION was missing fro my trigger. I apologize for the error.

After properly adding it back in, the Init From Backup method succeeded and worked properly - including the trigger and identity columns - provided they had 'NOT FOR REPLICATION' in them.

I did not have to use the method above to flip the "Publish" option form true to false.

The reason this method intrigues me is because I have a client whose subscription cannot initialize. Neither we, nor Microsoft - after over a month of an open, unresolved case - was able to solve. This method may allow the initialization to succeed where the snapshots failed.

Thanks for your article, Andy and thanks dbaker (or HTH) for the follow-ups.

- Sean