Microsoft Publisher end of life 2026: what happened, and what to do now

The two dates

The distinction is between subscription access and support for perpetual licenses.

• October 1, 2026. Microsoft began removing Publisher from Microsoft 365. It said subscribers would lose access "on or shortly after October 1, 2026, as the removal update process rolls out", and that Publisher will not be available to install or download after October 2026. If yours still opens, save PDFs of your files today.
• October 13, 2026. Support ended for Publisher bought outright (with a perpetual license). It keeps running on that machine but gets no more updates, fixes or security patches.

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, the week before the Christmas service, that the program was a .pub file.

Microsoft's advice, and its limits

The support article recommended 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 or PowerPoint, with templates from Microsoft Create. 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 and PowerPoint do not open .pub files. Moving to them means rebuilding each document from scratch or from a PDF.

If you missed the date: a plan that takes an afternoon

1. 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.
2. Make a PDF of each one. If a bought copy of Publisher is still installed somewhere, save PDFs from it. If not, stillPUB exports PDFs. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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

On the start screen, Convert a folder of Publisher files turns every .pub file in a folder into a PDF and an editable .stillpub copy, on your computer, and saves them in one zip with a report. For a whole file server, the stillPUB command line tool can scan the archive first and export from a script. See the CLI and agent page.

What stillPUB does and does not do

It opens .pub files from Publisher 2000 onward, keeps much of the page layout editable, and exports PDF, JPG and PNG. It does not write .pub files, and some WordArt, master-page and linked-text details can be flattened or lost during import. Check the import warnings and every page. See the feature-by-feature compatibility guide before moving a working document.