Announcement - Microsoft Publisher to be discontinued after October 2026

I'm sorry to say this but Microsoft Publisher has always been the most awful, horrible piece of rubbish. Word is much better. Most people who actually know anything about design or publishing detest Publisher.

Publisher was designed in the bad old days of Microsoft to try to lock people in to a format that nothing else understands (except recently Libre Office) in order to play monopolist and try to cut out the likes of Adobe InDesign and Quark Express while not actually offering anything decent in terms of real functionality.

It has always just been an alternate interface to the Word "engine" and functions that Word already had, with a few very basic templates thrown in that could have easily been included in Word. Every single thing that Publisher does can be done in Word, in fact I would say much more can be done in Word.

Don't believe me? Look at Microsoft's own brochure design templates online. Notice much love for Publisher? Not really...

https://create.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/brochures

Alternates?

Word can do a lot more than you might think and its files can be opened by people without Publisher. It is commercial but cross platform.

You can do a surprising amount in something like Libre Office, which is free and cross platform.

Scribus is cross platform and free. It is an excellent and very capable piece of software that can go far and above Publisher, doing things such as full magazines, but is sadly just a bit too technical for the average person and with only a handful of developers (who are mainly interested in that technical functionality rather than simplicity or accessibility) it is unlikely that it will improve much in that regard in the near future.

Affinity Publisher is commercial but affordable and not subscription based and on Mac and Windows and iPad. Affinity Publisher is a terrific piece of software, along with its sister apps Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo and they have rightly won awards. The Affinity apps have an active community and are recieving lots of developer love too. Affinity apps are quite accessible and there are videos and resources for the Affinity apps both from the developers and the community.

If you want something simple that does a much better job than publisher in almost every area, then look at Canva. It is web based.

I totally agree. I have been creating posters, weekly pew bulletins, deb ball tickets and much more for our.church parish for the past 35 years on my home computer.

Used publisher at work for social club events etc (22 years).

Do publicity for Facebook for our Dog Sports Club, and created members newsletters for many years with publisher.

I will be very sad if this software is removed.

I am now retired and still use it for non profit church (weekly) and Dog Sports club (non profit also). Now I have to pay a yearly subscription to be able to work this at home for these organisations.

Sure there are other suites of software that may do the job, but not one that does all as in publisher.

This is terrible news. I have been using Publisher for a very long time, I left Pagemaker Pro because I liked Publisher better.

Word is very frustrating when you are creating a newsletter or any other type document where you want the ability to place text boxes and photos wherever you want them.

It doesn't make any sense to me to discontinue Publisher, it is a great product.

Please keep it as part of the Office Pro software.

I agree that the demise of Publisher is terrible news. Please do not just confine it to Office Pro. Converted my kids to the easier manipulation of information layouts for projects when they were in high school and they loved it and found it great.

Publisher is the best kept secret in the Microsoft suite but it has never been promoted. I have used it professionally (at work), for non-profit activities (home) and children for secondary school before moving on to university (at home in the past).

Does anybody know if those Publisher pmd files can be converted by Sway? I have both personal and work accounts and Sway could be included with the Microsoft 365 on my work account. If not Sway, does any other program you know of convert pmd files?