I understand dropping support because it's not that used anymore and word or PowerPoint can do similar things, but stopping people from being able to use it or open existing documents is crazy. If you're on office 365 and don't convert your files before MS shuts down publisher you simply won't be able to open your old publisher documents with the office suite you pay for.
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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I've been worried about this with Publisher since MS acquired it in the mid 90's. It's always been a niche product (I used it before it was an MS product).
Frankly I'm surprised it's survived this long.
Thankfully I have a standalone copy. Screw Office 365.
Yeah, tbh I was surprised several years ago when I found out it was still being updated and included with 365, since they basically don't do anything to push people to use it. I still can't believe they aren't allowing people on 365 to use it unsupported after they drop support or at least release a good converter to convert them to .docx or .pptx - I can imagine there's plenty of businesses on office 365 that either: will forget that an important document is in publisher format or will completely fail to take any action to convert/migrate their publisher documents and will be scrabbling to try and replace/convert them.
I remember using publisher a lot in school in the 2000s because it was better for doing layout stuff for posters, etc. than word or PowerPoint were at the time. Nowadays I'd just use word or maybe PowerPoint (if I'm using MS office for it).
I don't think too many people will get caught short. I haven't seen a company using it since before MS acquired it.
In the publishing/layout world, there are much better products... Or there used to be. PowerPoint and Word can't come close to what a page layout program can do. I use it all the time for simple stuff that would take longer using Word, and I wouldn't even try even slightly complex stuff with word.
I suspect of lot of page layout is outsourced by companies any more, which is why MS is killing it. Weird.
Guess I need to find the latest full version, I only have Pub 2016.
Yeah, I was mostly thinking of smaller businesses that used it because it was part of the office suite they were subscribed to and not the professional creative, print or whatever places
This sucks.