I have hundreds (or thousands) of Publisher files — how to bulk convert them

Converting one file is a drag-and-drop. Converting a decade of a shared drive is a project — but a small one, if you do it in the right order: inventory first, then convert in batches, then spot-check with the fidelity notes instead of opening every PDF.

On Windows, dir /s /b *.pub > pub-inventory.txt from the drive root gives you the full list in seconds; on a Mac or a Linux file server, find . -name '*.pub' > pub-inventory.txt does the same. Zip each top-level folder and upload the zips whole — folder structure survives into the output, so the converted PDFs land exactly where the originals were. The rest of this guide covers batch sizes, credits, and what to do with the files that need a manual look.