Guides
Plain answers about .pub files, the Publisher retirement, and what to do next — written for church, school and small-office staff.
Publisher retirement checklist for church offices
Ten things to do before October 1, in order, starting with finding all your .pub files.
Someone sent me a .pub file and I can't open it
The two-minute answer, plus what to ask the sender for next time.
Convert PUB to PDF: every option after Publisher's October 2026 retirement
LibreOffice, online converters, printing to PDF from an old copy — an honest comparison with the catches of each.
How to open a .pub file on a Mac
Publisher never existed for Mac. Here's how to open, read and convert one anyway.
How to open a .pub file without Microsoft Publisher (2026)
Every way to open a Publisher file when you don't have Publisher — free viewers, converting, and what works on a phone.
What is a .pub file? (and why it needs Publisher)
Where .pub files come from, why nothing else opens them, and what to keep instead going forward.
Microsoft Publisher is retiring October 1, 2026: what actually happens to your files
Your files don't disappear. But the program that opens them does. Here's the real timeline and what to do this month.
Why your converted .pub file looks slightly different — and what we do about it
Fonts are the usual reason. What substitution means, why Publisher did it silently, and how we report it.
I have hundreds (or thousands) of Publisher files — how to bulk convert them
For IT admins and office managers: finding every .pub on a shared drive, converting in one batch, and checking the results.
We converted 50 real church bulletins: here's what broke
41 of 50 converted cleanly. The other nine had font or border changes. Side-by-side pictures of each.
What to use instead of Publisher after it retires
Word, Canva, Affinity, LibreOffice — what churches and small offices actually switch to, by kind of document.