Does the "enlarge mode" of the Placeholder object work when doing a local publish? (I can't seem to get it to work in local mode, and am not ready to publish to the site yet).
No, if you saw the page correctly locally, without exporting but in preview mode, the page must work in the same way when exported. If you want, send me the two files (master-page and page) and let me know what is the problem. I'll check the problem.