Microsoft Publisher End of Life: How to Convert Your .pub Files (2026 Guide)

What is happening to Microsoft Publisher?

Microsoft announced that Publisher will be discontinued as part of Microsoft 365 in October 2026. This follows a broader trend of Microsoft focusing development resources on Word, which has gradually gained some of Publisher's desktop publishing capabilities.

After October 2026, Publisher will no longer receive feature updates, security patches, or technical support. Existing installations on older machines may continue to run for a period, but Publisher will not be available to install on new machines through Microsoft 365.

For organizations — churches, schools, nonprofits, small businesses — that have accumulated years of .pub files, this creates an urgent migration problem: how do you preserve access to that content when the software used to create it is gone?

What formats should you convert to?

The right format depends on what you need to do with the files afterward:

For most organizations, PDF + IDML is the right combination: PDF for archiving and immediate access, IDML for files you need to continue editing. IDML opens in Affinity Publisher 2 (a one-time $70 purchase) and Adobe InDesign.

How to export yourself while Publisher is still installed

If you still have Publisher installed and only have a handful of files, you can export manually:

1. Open the .pub file in Publisher
2. File → Export → Create PDF/XPS → Publish
3. For IDML: Publisher does not export IDML natively. You need a third-party tool.

For organizations with dozens or hundreds of files, manual export is impractical. A batch conversion service processes all your files at once and emails you a download link.

What if you no longer have Publisher installed?

If Publisher is no longer on your machine, your options narrow:

• Find a machine that still has Publisher — a colleague, a library PC, or a computer you haven't upgraded yet
• Use a conversion service — services like ours run Publisher on a dedicated machine and handle the conversion for you
• Free online converters — these typically produce poor results because they use third-party parsers rather than Publisher itself; text reflow, font substitution, and layout drift are common problems

The most faithful conversions come from opening the file in actual Publisher. Once Publisher is gone from the market entirely, this becomes increasingly difficult.

Conversion services: what to look for

Not all conversion services are equal. The key question: does the service use real Publisher automation, or a third-party parser?

Third-party parsers reverse-engineer the .pub file format. They're faster and cheaper to operate, but they produce noticeably lower fidelity — text reflows incorrectly, fonts are substituted, and complex layouts break. Services using real Publisher open the file the same way you would, producing output that looks correct.

Publisher Conversion uses real Publisher automation — the same approach used by professional conversion services.

The cost math for organizations with 10–500 files

For a church with 200 newsletters and bulletins to migrate:

How to open IDML files in Affinity Publisher

1. Open Affinity Publisher 2
2. File → Open → select the .idml file
3. When the file opens: right-click on the pasteboard (the grey area surrounding the page) and set the color to white
4. Go to View and disable “Clip to Canvas” — this makes any content on the pasteboard visible
5. Install any missing fonts if prompted

Affinity Publisher 2 is available as a one-time purchase ($69.99 on Mac and Windows). There is no subscription required.

Timeline and action plan

Can I still open .pub files after Publisher is gone?

Yes, if you have an existing Publisher installation on a machine you keep running. No, if you need to open .pub files on a new machine — Publisher won't be available to install.

Conversion services can still process .pub files after EOL as long as they maintain a machine with a perpetual or grandfathered Publisher license. But the window for easy, widely-available conversion is now, not later.