You've converted your .pub file to PDF. Now what?
The .pub file needed one specific program. The PDF you just made opens in almost everything — so printing, small fixes, even a full redesign are back on the table.
Converting was the hard part. A .pub file opened in one program; your new PDF opens on practically any computer, phone or tablet, and a surprising amount of software can do more with it than just display it. Here's what, sorted by what you're trying to do.
Print it, send it, sign it
Print shops take PDFs directly — it's the format they prefer, because the page looks the same on their machine as on yours. Attach it to an email and nobody writes back asking what a .pub is. For paperwork, the reader you already have goes further than you'd think: Preview on a Mac and the free Adobe Acrobat Reader both let you highlight, add notes, fill in forms and sign. Preview can also delete, rotate and reorder pages.
Change the words
Every conversion here gives you a Word file (.docx) alongside the PDF. For fixing a date, a name or a paragraph, download the Word version and edit that — same content, none of the PDF surgery below.
If all you have is the PDF, Word can open that too: since Word 2013, File → Open on a PDF turns it into an editable document. Word works on a copy, so the PDF itself stays as it was, and the results are best on text-heavy pages — a picture-heavy flyer tends to come through with the layout shuffled. Google Docs does the same if you upload the PDF to Google Drive and choose "Open with Google Docs": the words arrive, the layout mostly doesn't.
Rebuild the design
If the document has a future — next year's festival flyer, the certificate you print every June — the PDF is also your way into a new design program. Affinity Publisher opens a PDF with the text and objects still editable, which is why it's the usual landing place for people who did real layout work in Publisher; it can't read .pub files, so the PDF is the bridge. If your conversion note says a font was substituted, install the original, select those headings in Affinity and set them back. Canva imports a PDF and turns it into an editable design too — expect a few minutes of tidying, and a changed heading font is easy to swap for a closer match from Canva's library while you're in there.
Whatever you do next, keep the original .pub file as well. It costs nothing to store, and it's the one exact record of what the document used to be.