Microsoft Publisher is retiring in October 2026, here is what to do

Microsoft Publisher has been the quiet workhorse behind newsletters, flyers, leaflets, certificates and those little A5 mailers for twenty years. Even if you never open it yourself, someone in your organisation, or one of your customers, probably does.

From 1 October 2026, Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported as part of Microsoft 365. After that date it stops opening, full stop.

What is actually changing

• Microsoft is removing Publisher from Microsoft 365 plans.
• After 1 October 2026, you can no longer open or edit Publisher (.pub) files using Microsoft Publisher.
• There is no migration path to a replacement "Publisher 365", Microsoft's view is that Word and PowerPoint now cover the common scenarios.

What you need to do before October 2026

The only real task is making sure no important work is trapped inside .pub files. The deadline is firm, so do not leave it to the last week.

• Find every .pub file that matters. Ask around, staff and volunteers often have a personal stash of templates on their own desktop.
• Convert each one to PDF if it is a finished document you just need to keep and print. PDF preserves the layout exactly as it was designed.
• Convert to Word if it is something people still edit, like a recurring newsletter template. Word handles most Publisher layouts reasonably well through the modern import.
• Convert to PowerPoint for anything that is really a single-page poster or flyer, the design canvas is a closer match.

Save the converted copies alongside the originals for now, and once you have confirmed the conversions look right, the old .pub files can be archived.

A free way to open old Publisher files

Microsoft is not offering a converter, which is a frustration. In my experience, LibreOffice opens Publisher files without any issue. It is free, it runs on Windows and Mac, and it gives you a way to keep working with .pub files or to export them to PDF, Word or PNG after October 2026.

It is not a long-term plan to keep designing in Publisher through LibreOffice, but as a safety net for legacy files it works well.

What to use instead going forward

For new work, the two practical options are:

• Microsoft Word, for anything text-heavy or templated that gets printed or emailed. The modern design tab handles columns, images and colour blocks far better than people remember.
• Microsoft PowerPoint, for posters, flyers and anything single-page. It is genuinely the better tool for visual layout now, even if it feels odd for "a leaflet".

For teams that did a lot of Publisher work, a proper design platform is worth the conversation. But for most small organisations, Word and PowerPoint cover 90% of what Publisher was doing, and the team already has them.

The honest summary

This is not a crisis, it is a tidy-up. The risk is a single, avoidable one: a file someone suddenly needs in November, in a format nothing will open. Spend half an hour finding and converting the important .pub files now, and it is dealt with.

If you have a pile of Publisher files and no one has time to sort them, or you would like a hand moving templates into Word or PowerPoint, get in touch.