By Jim Szymanski | Originally published September 26, 2026
Anyone who knows me well, knows I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Microsoft since, well… 1993. Some of the dumb things they’ve done, or have failed to do are baffling. Despite all their missteps though, they still earn money for their shareholders, so it’s all good according to their Annual Report. Consumers, like me, have a different opinion. Despite their occasional incompetence, I determined long ago they were the lesser of three evils, so I’ve stuck with them. Umm, mobile is a conversation for another day.
In a few weeks Microsoft will initiate one of the dumbest things they’ve ever done. On or about October 13th, Microsoft Publisher – a program most people have on their computers today, will be decommissioned – yanked from your PC’s. Publisher was launched in 1991, and I first became familiar with the program in 1995. In fact, that year while I was commuting between New Jersey and Billerica, MA a couple times a week, I considered relaunching The Hockey Review, my amateur hockey newspaper. With Publisher, in two nights I could do what used to take me a week or more of very long days formatting pages on copyboards to assemble a twenty-page publication. In preparing this post I found another 1995 Publisher file relating to a side gig I was considering. I quickly fell in love with this amazing tool. I rate it as the second best program Microsoft has ever created. OneNote, another application everyone has on their PC’s (and don’t know a thing about it) is the best program they’ve ever released. I’ve been using it since its inception in 2003 and yes, I have notebooks that old. Every youngster in America should learn how to master it as soon as they can navigate with a mouse… or their fingers, before they learn to read. But I digress.
I’ve opened Publisher at least once almost every day, for more than 25 years. Almost every day. I’ve used it to create special occasion cards, souvenir programs, announcements, posters, tickets, business cards, stickers, magnets, address labels, marketing materials, all the documents on my New Jersey Hockey History website, photo collages, covers for my published books, charts, lists, anything. It’s allowed me to make things look good for decades. I currently have 777 files on my home PC and another 147 files at the office – more than 7GB of data dating way back to 1995. Some files have as many as 100 pages. Thousands and thousands of hours of hard work. I’d have 1,000’s more Publisher files if I saved everything I created. Pulling three images together, resizing, annotating and outputting as a JPG or PDF does not justify saving the base file. I complete those simple tasks for business or personal use several times a day, with Publisher.
On October 13th, when Microsoft removes Publisher from Office 365, there will be no way to open a .PUB file – any of the more than 900 files on my machines. Months back, they suggested I convert the PUB’s into PDF files to make them available to print, though not edit. Microsoft has further suggested that Word and PowerPoint are good replacements for Publisher. Umm, NOT! Word sucks! Period. Have you ever tried getting two images in a Word document to align in a particular way? Good luck with that. Word was designed to write letters, and it often has a hard time doing that. Forget about graphic elements. PowerPoint with all it’s built in formatting, makes simple tasks difficult. Publisher, like OneNote is free form. No formatting. Drop in a bunch of images. Add some text boxes. Move them wherever you’d like. Resize. Add transparency and other elements. Change colors. Squeeze or stretch or curve text. You’re in control, not the program. Sure, you can use an Adobe product to create all this content, but it will cost you a $300/year subscription and it has a steep learning curve. Publisher has been included in Microsoft Office for decades. You can start creating as soon as you open it.
Microsoft hasn’t provided any clear explanation for their takedown, except saying Publisher is an old program. Hey Satya, so is Word. There are tens of thousands of users, maybe hundreds of thousands across our country who use Publisher every day like I do to create church bulletins, school announcements, posters, newsletters, etc. They have been speaking out in the forums, pleading with Microsoft to at least create a “sunset version” of Publisher – one last version with no connection to other programs or the Internet, so it can remain sandboxed on your PC – safe from infection. Microsoft already has something close, a stand-alone Publisher version that’s used by the Federal Government and military. It can’t receive updates, protecting it from malicious outsiders. This stand-along program for consumers could rake in $20M+ without much effort and keep Microsoft’s loyal followers pacified. They have not responded to the pleas. They don’t care. I do hope someone launches a Class Action against Microsoft to prevent this malicious act without good cause, resulting in tens of thousands losing millions of hours of hard work. Sign me up.
But wait, I wouldn’t share this unless it had a happy ending. After my efforts to find a license for a single stand-alone copy of Microsoft Publisher failed (there are wolves out there – beware) I turned my attention to an option the Microsoft Forums won’t talk about. Welcome to Libre Office, a free donationware platform that mimics Microsoft Office 365. They have alternative programs for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Publisher. Their Publisher like program is called Draw and it works! Draw is actually a vector graphic application, allowing you to create simple drawings – like a floorplan of your home. But Draw can also natively open Publisher .PUB files. Almost all the formatting from a Publisher file gets transferred to Draw during conversion. The saved file becomes an .ODG. I’ve read the more than 300 page manual and have done a bunch of tests. For all the things I do with Publisher, Draw will easily handle at least 90% of those tasks. That’s good enough for me. If you’ve got Publisher files, or may be thinking of cutting the cord with Office 365, you should check out Libre Office. https://www.libreoffice.org/ No Copilot AI interference. No being locked into the ecosystem of one of the Big Three. Independent. Stand alone. Free. It just works. When Publisher ceases to exist, I’ll be sending the folks at Libre Office a generous donation. It’s the right thing to do.
P.S. I’d love to hear a Federal judge order Microsoft to:
- Abandon the decommissioning of Publisher
- Inform ‘every” Office 365 user through messages and announcements that they can open and edit their .PUB files using Libre Office Draw.
That sounds fair to me.
I wonder which path Microsoft would take.
Editor’s Note — November 12, 2026
Jim originally wrote this commentary on September 26, 2026, ahead of Microsoft Publisher’s retirement. Microsoft ended support for Publisher in Microsoft 365 on October 1, 2026, and for the perpetual Publisher 2021 edition on October 13, 2026. Removal from Microsoft 365 installations is being rolled out through updates, so some users may still have access temporarily. Microsoft also confirms that perpetual-license versions can continue to operate without support.
Jim’s experience with LibreOffice Draw offers readers another option for opening and working with existing Publisher files, although formatting compatibility can vary depending on the document. We have preserved his original commentary and opinions without rewriting them.
For official guidance, see Microsoft’s Publisher retirement documentation: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/microsoft-publisher-will-no-longer-be-supported-after-october-2026