Microsoft Publisher Retired: What to Do With .pub Files

For 35 years, Microsoft Publisher has been the quiet workhorse behind a lot of small business and charity paperwork. Newsletters, price lists, event posters, order forms, menus, certificates: if it was printed in an office rather than by a designer, there is a good chance it started life in Publisher.

That era has now ended. Microsoft has retired Publisher, and for most businesses on Microsoft 365 it has either already disappeared from their computers or will do very soon. If your team still has folders full of .pub files, this is the moment to sort them out.

What has actually changed?

Microsoft announced that Publisher would reach the end of its life in October 2026. The key points from Microsoft’s own guidance are:

Microsoft 365 subscribers: Publisher is no longer included in Microsoft 365. Access is removed “on or shortly after 1 October 2026” as Microsoft rolls out the update that takes it away. After that, you can’t open or edit Publisher files in Publisher, and you can’t download or reinstall it.
Older one-off purchases of Office: if you bought Office 2021 (or an earlier version that included Publisher) outright, the app keeps working and you can still open and edit your files. However, support for these versions ended on 13 October 2026, so there are no more security updates or fixes.

Your files themselves are not deleted. The problem is that very little else can open them properly. A .pub file is a format that only Publisher really understood, so once Publisher is gone, those files can quickly become a dead end.

Why this matters more than it sounds

It is easy to shrug this off as “just an old program”. In practice, we see Publisher holding things businesses genuinely rely on:

the master copy of a price list or brochure that gets updated each year;
forms and templates that staff fill in and print every week;
charity newsletters, event posters and fundraising leaflets;
signs and notices in care homes, garages and reception areas.

Often only one person in the office knows how those files were made. If that person’s computer gets updated and Publisher vanishes, the business suddenly finds it can’t change a phone number on its own leaflet.

There is also a security angle. Running an unsupported copy of Office 2021 on purpose, just to keep Publisher, means using software that no longer gets security fixes. That is the kind of thing that can count against you for Cyber Essentials and with cyber insurers, so it should be a short-term bridge at most, not a plan.

Step one: find out where your Publisher files are

Before converting anything, work out what you have. Ask your team, and search your shared drives, SharePoint, Teams and OneDrive for files ending in .pub. You may be surprised how many there are, and how many are old versions nobody needs.

Sort them into three piles:

Still in use (forms, price lists, templates you update regularly). These need to be rebuilt so you can keep editing them.
Worth keeping for reference (past newsletters, old brochures). These just need to be readable.
Not needed (duplicates and drafts). Archive or delete these, so you aren’t spending time on them.

Step two: save copies as PDF while you still can

If anyone in the business still has Publisher working, either because their Microsoft 365 removal hasn’t arrived yet or because they have an older one-off copy of Office, use it now.

Microsoft’s recommended method is simple: open the file in Publisher, go to File, then Save As, choose where to save it, pick PDF as the file type and save. A PDF keeps the layout exactly as it looked and can be opened on any computer or phone.

If you have a large number of files, Microsoft also publishes a free sample script that converts Publisher files to PDF in bulk. It still needs a working copy of Publisher on the computer that runs it, and Microsoft suggests testing it first, so this is a job for whoever looks after your IT rather than something to try on a Friday afternoon.

Step three: rebuild the files you still edit

A PDF is great for reading, but not for editing. For the documents you change regularly, the cleanest long-term answer is to rebuild them in an app you already pay for.

Microsoft’s own suggestions are:

Word for newsletters, letterheads, labels, envelopes, forms, invoices and programmes;
PowerPoint for posters, banners and signs;
Word or PowerPoint for flyers, brochures, business cards, certificates and calendars.

Word can open a PDF and turn it into an editable document, which gives you a head start. Be warned that the layout often shifts, especially on picture-heavy pages, so expect to tidy it up. Microsoft also offers free templates through Microsoft Create, which can be quicker than fixing a messy conversion.

For anything customer-facing that really matters, like your main brochure, this is also a good excuse to have it properly designed once and saved in a format that will last.

What if Publisher has already gone?

If Publisher has already been removed and you have no other copy, you still have options:

Check for a working copy elsewhere. Someone in the business, or a trusted partner, may still have an older version of Office with Publisher. They can save your files as PDFs for you.
Try LibreOffice. This free office suite can import Publisher files using its Draw app. It is not perfect: complex layouts, tables and fancy text effects may not come out right. But it is often good enough to get the wording and pictures back.
Be careful with “free converter” websites. Uploading business documents to an unknown website means handing your data to strangers, and some of these sites are used to spread malware. We have written before about the hidden risks of free file converters. If in doubt, ask your IT provider first.

Use this as a quick tidy-up

Publisher’s retirement is a good prompt to look at the other “only one person knows how this works” bits of your setup. Old templates, ageing software and files saved on one person’s computer are common findings when we carry out an IT audit, and they cause the same problem every time: things work fine until the day they don’t.

While you are moving files around, make sure the new Word and PowerPoint versions are saved somewhere shared and backed up, such as SharePoint or Teams, rather than on someone’s desktop. If you aren’t sure your Microsoft 365 data is protected, our guide to what to check in a Microsoft 365 backup is a good starting point.

A simple checklist

Search your drives for .pub files and sort them into “in use”, “reference” and “not needed”.
Save everything worth keeping as PDF while someone still has Publisher.
Rebuild regular forms and templates in Word or PowerPoint.
Don’t keep an unsupported copy of Office around just for Publisher.
Avoid unknown online converters for business documents.
Save the new versions somewhere shared and backed up.

Need a hand?

If you have a pile of Publisher files and nobody quite knows what to do with them, we can help you find them, convert what’s worth keeping and set your team up with templates in Word and PowerPoint. It is all part of how we handle Microsoft 365 and IT management for our clients.

If you’d like us to look over your setup, book a free IT audit or a quick call and we’ll give you a clear, no-pressure picture of what needs attention.