When a .pub file won't open: damaged and very old files

You double-click a .pub file and Publisher refuses it. Or a converter gives you an error. The usual word for this is "corrupted", and it sounds final. Most of the time it isn't. In practice, a file that won't open falls into one of a few groups, and most of them have a fix.

What "corrupted" usually means

The file is often fine at its source. Something went wrong on the way to you.

A truncated download is the most common case. The browser or the network stopped early, and you have the first part of the file and nothing after it. The file has the right name and the right icon, but the end of the document is missing.

An email attachment can be damaged in transit. Some older mail systems and forwarding rules change attachments, and a file forwarded three times through different accounts can arrive changed.

A zero-byte file is the result of a failed sync. Cloud folders sometimes create the file name before the content arrives. If the sync stops, you keep an empty file with a real-looking name.

Then there are files that were never Publisher files. Someone renames a Word document to .pub, or a download link saves a web page under a .pub name. The extension is also used by other programs. A file called id_rsa.pub, for example, is a security key, not a document. And .pub is not .epub, which is an e-book. We cover that difference in PUB vs PDF.

Very old files are a different case

A file from the 1990s can be perfectly intact and still fail, because the program trying to open it doesn't know that version of the format.

We read files from Publisher 97, 98, 2000, 2002 and every newer version. Older files store their pages differently from newer ones, and a lot of our recent work went into exactly those files. Our end of September update lists the fixes for Publisher 97 and 2000 files, and an earlier update covers linked text boxes, tables and line spacing in the same older versions. We don't make promises about files from versions before Publisher 97.

How to check the file yourself

You can learn a lot in two minutes without any special software.

  1. Look at the file size. Right-click the file and choose Properties on Windows, or Get Info on a Mac. A size of 0 bytes means the file is empty, and nothing can open it. A size of a few kilobytes for a multi-page newsletter with photos also points to a cut-off file.
  2. Compare it with another copy. If the sender still has the file, ask them for its size. If your copy is smaller, it was cut short on the way.
  3. Look inside it. Open the file in Notepad or TextEdit. A real .pub file looks like random symbols with a few readable words scattered through it. If you see a readable web page, with text like html or "Access denied", you saved a web page, not the file. If you see one long line of letters and numbers with an email address at the end, it is a security key.
  4. Check where it came from. A file that came from a cloud folder may still be syncing. Wait for the sync to finish, or download it again straight from the website of that cloud service.

What to try next

Get a fresh copy first. Ask the sender to send it again, ideally as a link to a shared folder instead of a forwarded attachment. If it came from a cloud folder, download it again from the web page of that service. If you have an old backup, an older copy of the same file is often intact.

Then try the free preview. Drop the file on pubconvert.com and you see every converted page as a watermarked image before you pay anything. If the file is readable, the preview shows it. When the outer structure of a file is damaged, our converter tries to rebuild it from the part of the file that holds the document. If nothing usable comes back, the job stops with an error instead of handing you blank pages that look like a success. The preview takes files up to 25 MB and 100 pages.

If the preview fails, try the fresh copy before you decide the file is lost. And keep the original either way. A .pub file that won't open today can still be useful later, and a deleted one can't. Never save over it with a "repaired" version from any tool.

If you still have a copy of Publisher on some old computer, try the file there too. Microsoft 365 subscribers lost Publisher on 1 October 2026, but installed perpetual copies of Publisher still run. More on that in what to do with old .pub files.

Try the free preview on the file that won't open.