Microsoft is suggesting alternatives to its doomed Publisher product ahead of the software's demise in 2026.
The Redmond-based biz warned last year that its venerable desktop publishing software would reach the end of the road in October 2026 when Office LTSC 2021 support ends. At that point, the application will be stripped from Microsoft 365, "and existing on-premises suites will no longer be supported."
So how should a user create a mailout or leaflet with terrible clip art and font choices? How will noticeboards get populated with flyers?
The answer, according to Microsoft, is to use Word or PowerPoint. Or perhaps Designer.
Anyone who has tried to position items in Word, only to have the careful formatting of a document go horrendously awry due to a misplaced pixel, would likely take a step backward before trying to recreate that parish noticeboard page in the application.
Similarly, PowerPoint is more geared toward corporate presentations rather than a certificate of achievement.
Another challenge for users is figuring out what to do with all those .pub files created by the application. Fear not! Microsoft has a solution. Open up the file format or hand the application over to open source developers? No, of course not. Microsoft's suggestion is to have users export their creations to .pdf so they can still be viewed.
If a user wishes to edit the file, Microsoft has a solution to that, too: open the .pdf file in Word. However, the company warns: "The converted Word document will be optimized for text editing. As a result, its layout may vary from the original PDF – particularly if the document includes many graphics."
Sadly, that's pretty much the definition of what Publisher users tend to churn out – layouts with many graphics.
Microsoft's final suggestion is to use a third-party tool, though it obviously won't provide support for these. Third-party applications capable of importing include CorelDRAW, LibreOffice Draw, and the open source desktop publishing application Scribus. However, each comes with its own limitations and hoops for users to jump through. ®