Microsoft Publisher alternatives: what each one says about .pub files

The Microsoft Publisher alternatives, side by side

Each row below is one publisher alternative. The last column is what the vendor itself says about opening .pub files, with a link to the page it says it on. We have not ranked these by how well they keep a layout: that would need a test across many files, and we ran one file (see the LibreOffice row). Where we did not check a price, the cell says so.

“Not checked here” means we did not read a vendor page for that cell. Prices and versions change, so confirm on the vendor’s page before you pay.

Pros and cons, option by option

PubFold’s viewer (ours). Pro: free, nothing to install, works in the browser on any device, and your file is never uploaded. It can give you a Word file with editable text, a PDF or page pictures, and many files at once as one zip. Con: it opens and converts; it is not a layout editor, so you cannot keep designing in it. It has the reader’s limits (Publisher 95 to 98 only partly), replaces fonts your device lacks so line breaks can differ, and in Word text boxes become paragraphs in reading order. We tested it on our own sample files only.

Word and PowerPoint. Pro: if you already have Microsoft 365 there is nothing new to learn, and Microsoft recommends them for new newsletters. Con: Microsoft’s own route needs Publisher to make the PDF first, so it does not help if Publisher is already gone. Microsoft says the Word version of a PDF is optimized for text editing and may change the layout, especially with many graphics.

Affinity. Pro: it is the one Microsoft itself names, the vendor documents direct .pub import, and its site says it is free for individuals. Con: its download buttons lead to a Canva sign-in page, and Affinity is a design program, not a word processor. Its own help says tables come in as text frames, multi-column text becomes one column, hyperlinks, lists, gradients and master-page content are not carried over, and color, rotation and text formatting are not guaranteed. A newsletter built on columns and tables will need rebuilding.

LibreOffice Draw. Pro: free, on every desktop system, and The Document Foundation calls Draw the quickest way to open, view, edit and manage Publisher documents. Con: Word is not among the formats the guide lists for Draw. In our test with one file (LibreOffice 26.2.6.3, on Linux, a 2-page A4 test file from LibreOffice’s own collection), it opened the file and saved a PDF, an ODG and a PNG, but would not save Word, and the Russian text on page 1 came out garbled. One file is not a fidelity study: older files with non-Latin text can come out garbled, and ours did. The version you download is newer than the one we tested. The Document Foundation says .pub files opened in LibreOffice can be saved in the OpenDocument Format.

Scribus. Pro: it is free, and The Document Foundation says Scribus imports Publisher files through the same library as LibreOffice. Con: Scribus’s own wiki page on the subject dates from 2014 and says only a development version had the filter, we found no current Scribus documentation, and no source we read says how well it keeps a layout. We have not tested it.

PubKeep. Pro: it is built for exactly this job, covers Publisher 2000 through Microsoft 365 by its own account, and includes a browser version. Con: it costs money: $149 once from 1 November 2026, after a founder price of $99 that ended on 31 October. We have not tested it, so we cannot say how it handles any given file.

PubExport. Pro: by its own account it is free, installs nothing, runs in the browser without uploading your file, converts a whole folder at once and offers more output formats than our viewer (SVG, JPG, text). Con: it is paid for by ads on the page, and its FAQ says a few unusual layouts come out empty. We have not tested it, so we cannot say how it handles any given file.

pubconvert.com. Pro: one payment of $49 gets editable output for Word, InDesign, Affinity and LibreOffice, and the free preview lets you look first (watermarked). Con: it is a paid service whose home page does not say how files are handled or which versions work. Microsoft’s own page says third-party converters vary in quality and that it does not support them. We have not tested it.

Canva. Con: it does not list .pub among the files it opens, so a .pub file has to become a PDF first, and Canva’s own help pages disagree on whether the text of an imported PDF is editable. See how to bring a Publisher design into Canva.

How to choose

Pick the line that sounds like you.

• I only need to read or print old files. Use our free viewer in your browser, or LibreOffice Draw or Affinity on a computer, both free. See how to open a .pub file without Publisher.
• I need the text in Word. Open the file in our Publisher to Word tool and download a .docx. The text stays editable, but the layout becomes a Word flow, so expect to tidy it.
• I need to keep editing a newsletter or flyer. Expect to rebuild part of it in any tool. Compare the free options on free Publisher replacements, and use Word or PowerPoint if that is what you already have.
• I have a whole archive of files. Save PDFs of the whole folder instead of opening files one by one. Our viewer takes many files at once and returns one zip; for very large archives, a LibreOffice script did that for two files in our test on Linux, and the steps are in how to convert a whole folder of .pub files. Paid options such as PubKeep’s converter exist for this too.
• I want to move to Canva. The simplest documented route is a PDF. See Publisher to Canva.

Whichever you pick, keep the original .pub files. A PDF is for reading and printing, and a converted copy is a second copy, not a replacement. For dates, see Microsoft Publisher end of life.