Publisher left Microsoft 365 on 1 October. What has changed?

We are writing this on 6 October 2026. Microsoft announced the end of Publisher back in 2024, and we covered the dates in what happens when Publisher is discontinued and in Microsoft 365 loses Publisher on October 1. One of those dates has now passed. Here is where things stand.

What stopped on 1 October

Microsoft's support page put it plainly: "Microsoft 365 subscribers will not be able to access Publisher after October 1, 2026." If you used Publisher through a Microsoft 365 subscription, at home or at work, it is no longer part of what you pay for. You can't open or edit .pub files in Publisher through your subscription any more.

Your .pub files themselves did not change. They are still on your computer, your shared drive or your cloud folder, exactly as you left them. What you lost is the program that opened them.

What still works

If you bought Publisher as part of a one-time purchase, such as Office 2021, Office LTSC 2021 or an older Office suite, your copy keeps running. Microsoft says "you will still be able to install and use the app beyond this date." Your files open as they always did.

What ends for those copies is support. Microsoft's support for the perpetual version of Publisher ends on 13 October 2026, when Office 2021 and Office LTSC 2021 reach end of support. At the time of writing, that date is still ahead. After it, the program keeps working, but it gets no more fixes or security updates.

So if someone in your office or family still has an installed copy of Publisher, that computer is now valuable. It can open every file, export it, and show you how the file was meant to look.

What Microsoft told people to do

Microsoft's advice was to convert existing files to another format before 1 October. It recommends PDF for files you want to view or print, and Word for files you want to edit, with a note that the layout may change in Word. For new work it points people to Word and PowerPoint: Word for things like newsletters, calendars, labels and business cards, and PowerPoint for posters, signs and certificates. Microsoft also published a PowerShell script that converts many .pub files to PDF at once.

That script automates Publisher itself. It needs a working copy of Publisher on the computer. If you lost Publisher with your Microsoft 365 subscription, it can't help you any more. We wrote about the script and the other batch options in how to batch convert Publisher files.

A practical path from here

If you still have Publisher installed anywhere, start there. If you don't, a converter does the same job without it. Either way, the order of work is the same, and it is the checklist from one month left for Publisher, a little shorter now.

  1. Collect the .pub files. Search every computer, the shared drive, old email attachments and the USB sticks in the drawer.
  2. Sort them into two piles. Files you want to read, print or send become PDF. Files someone will edit again become Word, or IDML if you work in InDesign or Affinity Publisher.
  3. If you have an installed copy of Publisher, export the important files to PDF from Publisher now. That PDF is the best record of how each file should look.
  4. Convert the rest without Publisher. On pubconvert.com you drop a file and see a free, watermarked preview of every page before you pay. A one-time $49, tax included, covers as many conversion jobs as you like, up to 20 files and 2 GB per job.
  5. Keep the original .pub files next to the converted ones. Converters keep getting better, and a kept .pub can be converted again later.

For large archives, the PubConvert app for Windows converts on your own PC without uploading anything.

What has not changed

Your files are not lost, and your files have no deadline of their own. Nothing deletes a .pub file because Publisher is gone. The pressure now is practical rather than urgent: the longer the files sit unconverted, the more of them end up on a computer nobody can open them on.

Preview a file free and start with the one you need most.