Restaurants and small shops: menus, price lists and signage
In a lot of restaurants, the real menu is not the laminated one on the table. It's a .pub file on the office computer. When the price of eggs goes up, someone opens that file, changes a few numbers and prints a new batch. The same goes for the price list by the till in a hardware shop, the "back in 10 minutes" sign and the specials board.
Microsoft removed Publisher from Microsoft 365 on 1 October 2026. If that's how your office gets Publisher, the master copy no longer opens. You don't have to retype the menu. You can convert it.
Pick a format for each job
The master copy needs to stay editable. Convert it to Word if you or your manager make the changes yourselves. The text boxes, pictures and price tables keep their places, so changing a price means clicking on it and typing. We explain how that works in Publisher to Word, without the picture-of-a-page trick.
If a designer looks after your menus, convert to IDML. It opens in Adobe InDesign and Affinity Publisher, with the layout and text still editable.
For printing, convert to PDF. Print shops ask for PDF, and a PDF looks the same on their computer as on yours. It's also the right file to put on your website or send to a delivery app.
Price lists are tables
Many menus and price lists are built as tables: a column of dishes, a column of prices, sometimes a shaded header row. Tables carry across as tables in Word and IDML, so the prices stay lined up when you change them. After you convert, check one row with a long dish name to make sure it still fits.
Check before you print 500 copies
Preview the menu free first, up to 100 pages and 25 MB per file, with no account. Look at the fonts, the logo and the prices. Word files keep your original font names, so if the font isn't on your computer, Word uses a replacement. Installing the font fixes that.
Full access is a one-time $49 for as many conversion jobs as you like, up to 20 files and 2 GB per job. Your files are deleted when the conversion or download finishes.
Preview your menu free to see how it comes out.