PUB to PDF

Microsoft retired Publisher on 1 October 2026. Microsoft 365 subscribers can no longer open or edit .pub files with it, and support for the last perpetual version, in Office LTSC 2021, ended on 13 October 2026. No other Office application has ever read the format, which is why Word and PowerPoint cannot help.

Close, yes. The page is rebuilt rather than reflowed: every text box sits where Publisher put it, at the size the file says, with your photographs and clip art in place and each story poured through its own columns. The lettering is the one thing we cannot supply — Publisher names real typefaces nobody may hand out — so by default the PDF uses the nearest serif, sans or monospace. Tick “Use the fonts on this computer” and it uses the real ones instead, straight off your own machine. WordArt headings are the one thing not read at all.

It is drawn. Publisher keeps clip art as a drawing rather than a picture, and this converter replays it — the giraffe and the trumpets in a school newsletter come through with the rest of the page. A drawing it cannot replay is counted under the result rather than dropped in silence, so you know there is something to look for. Photographs you added yourself are ordinary images and always come through.

Not from this page. The conversion runs in your browser, so the file stays on your machine. There is also an API for scripting a folder of files, which does run on a server — that one is a deliberate choice you make, not what happens when you use the page. The API returns the words and pictures rather than the layout; rebuilding the page is the browser's half of this tool.

Not yet. This gives you a PDF, which is what Microsoft recommends for anything you need to keep readable. If what you want is editable text, open the PDF in Word — it will convert it — or copy the text straight out of it.

Publisher 2.0 and 3.0, from the mid-nineties, store their text in a different place inside the file, and this converter does not read it yet. The file is not damaged. If you have several, say so and it is worth adding.

A PUB file converter that shows you the result, which is the only useful answer now. If you came looking for how to open a PUB file, a way to open PUB files nothing on your computer will open any more, or a Microsoft Publisher file converter, it is the same job: convert PUB to PDF and read the PDF anywhere. There is no viewer left to install, and nothing to install here either.