October 1, 2026
October 13, 2026
Dates from Microsoft's support article "Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported after October 2026", checked 2026-09-09.
The two dates
The distinction is between subscription access and support for perpetual licenses.
- October 1, 2026. If Publisher came with a Microsoft 365 subscription, it stops being available. Keep another way to open your files.
- October 13, 2026. If you bought Publisher outright (with a perpetual license), it keeps running on that machine but gets no more updates, fixes or support.
What does not happen
Your files are not touched. A .pub file is a file on a disk; Microsoft removing a program from a subscription does not reach into your Documents folder. The risk is not losing the files. The risk is losing the only program that opened them, and then discovering in November that the Christmas program was a .pub file.
Microsoft's advice, and its limits
The support article recommends converting existing files to another format before October 1, 2026, and shows how to save a PDF from Publisher. For new work it points to Word, PowerPoint and Designer. Two things are worth knowing:
- A PDF preserves a shareable page layout but is not the original Publisher project. PDF editing or Word conversion may change the layout. Keep an editable source as well.
- Word, PowerPoint and Designer do not open .pub files. Moving to them means rebuilding each document from scratch or from a PDF.
A plan that takes an afternoon
- Find the files. Search every computer and shared drive for
*.pub. Sort by date modified. The ones touched this year are the ones that matter. - Export a PDF of each one while you still have Publisher, if you do. This is Microsoft's advice and it is right: a PDF archive costs nothing and protects the things you only need to read or reprint.
- Open the living documents in stillPUB. The bulletin, the newsletter, the certificate template, the menu. Read the conversion report for each. Where something did not convert, fix it once, then save as .stillpub. From then on that file is your editable master, and it does not depend on Microsoft.
- Tell the next person. Write down where the .stillpub files live and that stillpub.com/app opens them. The person who does the bulletin in 2028 will thank you.
If you have hundreds of files
The browser app opens one document at a time. The stillPUB command line tool exports documents to PDF from a script, which is the practical route for a whole archive. See the CLI and agent page.
What stillPUB will and will not do
It opens .pub files from Publisher 2000 onward, keeps them editable, and exports PDF, JPG and PNG. It does not write .pub files, and some WordArt, master page and linked text box details can be flattened or lost during import. Check the report and every page. The full picture is on how to open a .pub file without Publisher.