Anyone still use Microsoft Publisher? It will no longer be supported after October 2026

[highplainsdem]

Last edited Sun Apr 5, 2026, 08:25 PM - Edit history (1)

Saw this Microsoft notice posted on Hacker News today.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/microsoft-publisher-will-no-longer-be-supported-after-october-2026-ee6302a2-4bc7-4841-babf-8e9be3acbfd7

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In October 2026, Microsoft Publisher will reach its end of life. After that time, it will no longer be included in Microsoft 365 and existing on-premises suites will no longer be supported. Microsoft 365 subscribers will no longer be able to open or edit Publisher files in Publisher. Until then, support for Publisher will continue and users can expect the same experience as today.

Many common Publisher scenarios—including creating professionally branded templates, printing envelopes and labels, and producing customized calendars, business cards, and programs—are already available in other Microsoft 365 apps such as Word and PowerPoint. For recommendations on where to start common Publisher scenarios, see below. You can also find a wide array of customizable templates at Microsoft Create.

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Action Recommended: Convert your existing files to another format before 10/1/2026. After this date, you will no longer be able to open or edit these files in Microsoft Publisher.

How to prepare your files for Publishers retirement by saving them in another format.

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Editing to add this from Neowin, 4/3:

https://www.neowin.net/reports/people-are-furious-that-microsoft-is-killing-off-publisher

People are furious that Microsoft is killing off Publisher
As October 2026 nears, Publisher users slam Microsoft over access loss and messy workarounds, reigniting frustration over its upcoming app retirement.

Usama Jawad · Apr 3, 2026 03:22 EDT

Back in February 2024, Microsoft announced that it was killing off Publisher and removing it from Microsoft 365. For those unaware, this utility is typically used to create professionally branded templates, envelops, and labels, but Redmond stated that customers should start using PowerPoint, Designer, and Word for these purposes instead. Now, ahead of the retirement deadline of October 2026, users have started seeing reminder notifications, and they aren't happy.

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Neowin has noticed that in several Facebook groups, hundreds of people are publicly voicing their displeasure at this move. Some comments from users are highlighted below:

It won’t let you open files? That’s bull****.
F**k, I use publisher for all of our printed handouts. Trying to make a ledger sized PowerPoint is going to be a nightmare. Also publisher has so many amazing alignment/design tools that PowerPoint just doesn't.
This is why cloud based software sucks.
It's the only piece of software Microsoft didn't ruin with bad UI, so obviously they had to dump it.
And there goes my M365 subscription, because I really only use it for publisher projects. I do IT support at a library and use Publisher for a lot of our handouts and such.
Come on now!!! Why, just why?

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That said, Publisher users are still not happy that they won't even be able to open their existing Publisher files. Indeed, Microsoft has highlighted considerably convoluted ways to export Publisher content and then re-open it in Word, PowerPoint, and Designer. Notably, this retirement echoes the feelings behind the retirement of WordPad, where Microsoft eventually began integrating the same functionalities in Notepad.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

1. Fuck you, Microsoft!

[jmowreader]

2. Thank Cthulhu for that!

I shudder to think of how much film that program has destroyed since it's been around.

[highplainsdem]

3. ???

[jmowreader]

4. Let me explain because this is pretty technical

When you output a file for printing on a conventional press, whether it be an offset press, a flexographic press or a rotogravure press, you need to "separate" the job into its cyan, magenta, yellow, black (we call it CMYK) and "fifth" colors. (A fifth color might be something like PANTONE 871, which is a metallic, as are all the 870-series PANTONE colors - it has metal particles in it as its pigment. If you want the printed piece to have a stripe of gold, silver or bronze in it, you put out a sheet of film or a plate for that color and load that ink into one of the towers on your press.)

If you use a professional-grade layout program like Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress, it works in CMYK internally. If you put a process color like 100%C, 44%M, 0%Y and 0%K in your job, when your film or plates come out of the imager the cyan channel will have a place with 100% cyan and the magenta channel will have the same place with 44% magenta. In case you're wondering, this is the build for PANTONE 300, a really pretty blue. This goes whether you're running separations straight out of the program to your imager or putting out a "composite" PostScript or PDF file and laying out the plate in an imposition program like Preps, which arranges the pages so that when you fold the printed sheet all the pages are in the right order.

Microsoft Publisher works with RGB data internally. To get it to separate you have to run it through the Windows print driver, which uses Windows' color management system to separate it into RGB.

"Well, that's not so bad. You can just strip in the film for the Publisher files." It is if you're running an imposed workflow - especially if not all the pages in the job came out of Publisher. I have personally ran jobs built in five different programs - some in Publisher, some in Quark, others in an Adobe layout program, then CorelDraw and Aldus FreeHand. And that doesn't work at all if you're running a direct-to-plate system like everyone does now. Modern digital front ends can separate RGB to CMYK, but you're almost guaranteed to get colors different from the designer's intent - especially RGB blue.

There are two problems with putting a CMYK engine in Microsoft Publisher. One is that most people don't need it - if your output device is an $89 desktop inkjet printer it's not going to support CMYK input, and that's the typical output device for Publisher. The other is the CMYK engine would probably triple the price of the program, and the only positive attribute of Publisher is it's dirt cheap.

And so, I am quite glad that those files will soon not be entering prepress professionals' nightmares.

[highplainsdem]

6. Thanks for explaining! It does sound like a nightmare for what you were doing.

[Prairie Gates]

9. Exactly right

[LearnedHand]

12. Publisher is definitely not the right solution for professional publishing

It only ever was intended for small office jobs, families, clubs, etc. RGB is fine for small jobs like this.

[LeftInTX]

5. I still use a discontinued program called Serif Page

Plus.

It was dc/d in 2009. I bought the old copy for $25.
They have since replaced it and I bought it's replacement for about $30. They are different. The replacement is much more graphic heavy and looks a bit like a fancy version of Canva or magazine layout. It won't accept Page Plus files, but will open Pdf's created by Page Plus.

Serif is based in the UK.

[LearnedHand]

15. I still grieve over the loss of Aldus PageMaker

[EX500rider]

7. Not surprising as it was first issued in 1991

[Prairie Gates]

8. It already lost to InDesign years ago in terms of a casual market

which is now further losing to Canva.

InDesign probably still has a more professional market, but there are others, including the whole array of structured authoring apps.

The truth is that Publisher was never a serious print or digital publication software program. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it has.

[jmowreader]

10. It was never intended to be

It was for things like envelopes and neighborhood newsletters. In those cases it works well enough.

Where you run into trouble is if you send a $20,000 job to a printing plant - yes, I've gotten jobs that big in it - and expect it to look like you hired a Madison Avenue advertising agency to lay the job out. That, it can't do.

[David__77]

11. It would be nice to get away from Microsoft entirely.

[LearnedHand]

13. I found a cool office suite on European Alternatives

I’ve tried LibreOffice and other clones, but none of them have the graceful interface MS Office does. I found Ashampoo Office 9, and it’s as close to MS products as I’ve ever seen. It’s a permanent license, not a subscription, and it’s a German product.

https://www.ashampoo.com/en-us/office-9

https://european-alternatives.eu/

[LearnedHand]

14. I find it hilarious that they recommend Office

Word does many things well, but it IS NOT a page layout and design product. The number one need in page layout is to treat blocks of text as elements. While you can kludge a solution in Word using text boxes, it’s a very fragile solution that doesn’t hold up with complicated designs.

[LeftInTX]

17. I know. I did a newsletter in Word. OMG. What a full time nightmare!

I had to create three columns and all images were tables. It was just awful.

[Intractable]

16. Solution: install Office 2010 or 2013. Get rid of 365.

Stop paying them $120 a year.

I'm doing this now with a friend who needs her Publisher to work.