publisher being discontinued - we need support

Question

publisher being discontinued - we need support

MM 5

I have been using publisher at work for over 20 years, the news that it is being discontinued is devistating. Unfortunately I don't think word or powerppoint will be able to produce anywhere near the type of documents I currently produce.

my question is - the publisher I currently use at work is with microsoft 365, most of the documents I produce have been saved in a glow teams or on onedrive. Meaning when I need to retrieve a document I need to download it to my desktop before I can edit it. My understanding is that when publisher stops in October I will no longer be able to access my files at all.

If however I purchase a perpetual publisher package will I be able to download and open my saved current documents from onedrive/teams/desktop ?

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2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

If you can purchase Office Professional 2021, you will get a perpetual license of Publisher.

The tricky part is to ensure that you get a valid license, since Office Professional is no longer sold by Microsoft.

Note that many other versions of Office, such as Office Professional Plus 2021, will usually be volume licenses, and these require a customer which is an organization (for example, a business) rather than an individual user.

If you want to try something which isn't a Microsoft product, Affinity by Canva may be an alternative. I haven't tested it much myself, but it appears to be capable. You would have to convert your Publisher files to PDFs and then open them in Affinity.

Answer 2

Yes. If you purchase a perpetual license of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2021 with Publisher 2021, you should be able to continue opening and editing your existing Publisher files after October 2026.

Your Publisher files stored in OneDrive, Teams, or on your desktop are still just Publisher files (.pub). You can download a file from OneDrive or Teams to your computer and open it with the locally installed Publisher 2021. The fact that the file is stored in OneDrive or Teams does not prevent Publisher 2021 from opening it.

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2021, including Publisher 2021, is sold as a perpetual license. Once it is installed and activated, it should continue to function normally even after Microsoft ends support in October 2026. End of support means Microsoft will stop providing security updates, patches, bug fixes, and technical assistance. It does not mean the software suddenly stops working or that your existing .pub files become inaccessible.

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hth

Marcin