Microsoft Publisher Books Its Retirement Party for 2026 (theregister.com) 26
Microsoft is confirming plans to deprecate its Publisher application in 2026. From a report: This writer has fond memories of Microsoft Publisher, which started life in 1991 as a desktop publisher for Windows 3.0. While alternatives existed in the form of Ventura Publisher, Timeworks, and later QuarkXPress, Microsoft Publisher was a useful tool to write newsletters. Unlike Word, Publisher was focused on layout and page design. Though it lacked many of the features of its competitors, it was responsible for some genuinely horrendous designs, and was popular due to its cheap price.
Despite not finding much favor with professionals, Microsoft Publisher continued to be updated over the years. Microsoft Publisher 97 was the first to turn up in the Microsoft Office suite, and the most recent edition, released in 2021, is available as part of Microsoft 365. However, all good things -- and Publisher -- must come to an end. Microsoft has warned that the end is nigh for its venerable designer. "In October 2026, Microsoft Publisher will reach its end of life," the company said. "After that time, it will no longer be included in Microsoft 365, and existing on-premises suites will no longer be supported. Until then, support for Publisher will continue, and users can expect the same experience as today."
Despite not finding much favor with professionals, Microsoft Publisher continued to be updated over the years. Microsoft Publisher 97 was the first to turn up in the Microsoft Office suite, and the most recent edition, released in 2021, is available as part of Microsoft 365. However, all good things -- and Publisher -- must come to an end. Microsoft has warned that the end is nigh for its venerable designer. "In October 2026, Microsoft Publisher will reach its end of life," the company said. "After that time, it will no longer be included in Microsoft 365, and existing on-premises suites will no longer be supported. Until then, support for Publisher will continue, and users can expect the same experience as today."
.pub file (Score:4, Funny)
Re:.pub file (Score:5, Informative)
LibreOffice Draw.
In general, LibreOffice has more support for abandoned MS Office document formats than MS Office does.
Some people love to pay subscription fees, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Subscription fees gives the assurance that if there's a problem that the good hearted folks at microsoft will help them out. Reality is that microsoft will tell them to screw off. Microsoft Support department exists mostly to provide a fiction that support exists.
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"someone is going to send me a .pub file to print."
Well you probably just want to view it rather than print it.
(typically it will be the monthly company newsletter)
So what will O365 do with the file when you try to open it after that date?
Great for some things. (Score:2)
I still use Publisher 2010 for making greeting cards; it seems great for this. Other applications, like Scribus or LibreOffice Draw, seem like overkill.
I've resigned myself to having to using, probably, Draw, going forward as I'll be using my Linux Mint system full-time when Windows 10 hits EOL, as my current Windows PC is too old to (officially) support Windows 11 (and I don't think I'd like it over Windows 10 anyway). I've already migrated all my misc spreadsheets from Excel, and my (long-time) budge
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Yes, I remember greeting cards, those pieces of heavy paper with cute sayings that we all used to send each other! Nowadays, the only "greeting cards" I get are junk mail from people who want to sell something.
It's probably not coincidental that Publisher is going away, it is good at things people *used* to do.
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They still do those things; Canva is the most recent company to build an empire on the same shit. The only difference is that Publisher prints it out and Canva spits it directly into the social media firehose. Well, I guess the other difference is that Publisher isnt a shitty web app. So long, Publisher, and thanks for all the brochures.
EOL doesn't mean unusable in a VM (Score:2)
It's trivial to have any version of Windows at hand in virtual machines on Linux (and sample other distros too).
You might try Publisher in Wine etc too.
If you have the space I make VMs based on old OS installs (Windows and Linux) so I can have the entire identical running install at hand for convenience. External drives will do.
Re: EOL doesn't mean unusable in a VM (Score:2)
Scribus (Score:2)
Scribus is a free desktop publishing program.
It's a bit intimidating when you first load it, but the basics aren't difficult to grasp after a bit of playing around.
I use it to create ads and coupons for my business.
A friend of mine uses it to do the layout for his weekly newspaper, as well as things like flyers and business cards for his commercial printing operation.
Re: Scribus (Score:2)
Scribus is perfect for replacing publisher because both are pathetic.
Try doing a Scribus document with more than a handful of pages and you will quickly find that Pacemaker on a Macintosh from the fucking eighties is more useful than current Scribus on a modern system.
Scribus is suitable for greeting cards, though.
Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Publisher actually isn't a terrible page layout program. Sure, the earlier editions were pretty janky, but it really shaped up after 2007...and while the QuarkXpress and InDesign die hards still scoff at it, they're not the target demographic. The target demographic were office folks who needed something more than MS Word for flyers and other simple page layout tasks, but weren't going to learn the nuts and bolts of Quark or InDesign to make those things.
Infuriatingly, Publisher was only available as a standalone product, or as part of the Professional versions of Office; it wasn't included in the 'home' or 'standard' versions...and the folks who had the budget for Office Professional tended to have the budget for InDesign, too. Sure, MS bundled it with the subscription versions of Office, but that's after a decade of playing games with the availability. By then, there were alternatives.
Ultimately though, I think the reason Publisher is being retired isn't because of the application, it's the templates. To avoid everyone having same-y layouts, the design templates need to be rotated in, and doing so takes artistic development time. Meanwhile, Canva is the new darling product for the niche Publisher had, and Affinity Publisher is both inexpensive and perpetually licensed, making it a viable option, too. With there being less of a need for paper flyers by virtue of e-mail and social media, even Constant Contact ate into the Publisher install base.
Like most things, I'm sure it's still got its loyalists and its niche users, but I'm reasonably confident that 98% of the use cases for Publisher are adequately covered either by InDesign, Affinity, Canva, or Constant Contact. My only hope is that MS makes some sort of converter for .pub and .pubx files to be open in something else.
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My only hope is that MS makes some sort of converter for .pub and .pubx files to be open in something else.
Haha. A while ago I needed to upgrade an old Outlook Express 6 mail machine to Live Mail 2012, and I couldn't because the OE6 mailbox format is too old and unsupported. The solution was to do a stopgap upgrade to Live Mail 2009 and then to 2012. Microsoft had deleted every trace of Live Mail 2009 from their web site, so I ended up having to pirate a free application just to perform an update to a totally different version.
Companies today are all too happy to leave you in a lurch.
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The target demographic were office folks who needed something more than MS Word for flyers and other simple page layout tasks, but weren't going to learn the nuts and bolts of Quark or InDesign to make those things.
Have you used InDesign? It is literally easier to use than Publisher. Quark is kind of terrible (it's functional, but the interface is bad and the people who designed it should feel bad) but InDesign inherited a great UI from Aldus Pagemaker. Things largely just work like you'd expect, and controls are located where you would want them!
A poor workman ... (Score:2, Troll)
... it was responsible for some genuinely horrendous designs ...
That's like saying the hammer is responsible for a badly made table.
Re: A poor workman ... (Score:3)
If the hammer has an uneven face, it will be responsible for dings in the wood, even though it's *possible,* (but difficult), to make a great table with it.
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If you get dings in the wood then you'll be at fault for not using a nail set. A smooth faced hammer causes damage when you hit the wood with it, too. It just isn't as obvious.
Publisher is going away because Word does all the same stuff.
Affinity Publisher time... (Score:1)
Time to look at Affinity Publisher, if places have not done so already. This is the easiest way to wean people from Publisher. LibreOffice Draw is another solid way, but Affinity does an excellent job of having application quality.
To boot, you purchase outright... no subscriptions needed with Affinity.
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OK for basic use (Score:2)
You could use Publisher to do some pretty good work, but most people authoring books and not just making basic internal communications are likely using Adobe InDesign, which is descended from PageMaker.
I've used all of the above over the years and since I have an Adobe Cloud subscription (the only software 'subscription' I am willing to have) InDesign is my go-to for that sort of thing these days.
The Microsoft Playbook in a nutshell... (Score:2)
"Though it lacked many of the features of its competitors, it ... was popular due to its cheap price."
I had never even seen it before (Score:2)
This might be - at least in part - due to having seen Quark XPress at my work starting in 2000. Nobody wanted to use anything else for layout there. My wife has used by Quark and Adobe InDesign for a couple decades now, and I doubt she ever heard
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You can successfully use Word to create documents with positioned elements by placing every element and autoflowing nothing.
This is indeed still very bad, and you wind up having to edit copy in another Word window and then paste it into your document, but that's not too different from the common work flow of editing copy in the word processor of your choice and then pasting (or otherwise importing) it into DTP like InDesign.
It's a much worse option than real DTP software, but you've probably already got Wor
Noooooooooo! (Score:1)
I have actively used MSPub since the Office 97 days. I still use it to generate calandars, create ads/coupons for businesses and quick graphics design items that I snip with the Windows tool. MS Publisher is probably the only reason I havent switched to MacOS or Linux full time. Oooof. What's out there that is at least multi platform (Linux/MS/Mac)? Easy to use and isnt some goofy annual subscription? Templates are a plus too. crap.