LibreOffice Comes to the Rescue as Microsoft Publisher Support Ends

Microsoft officially ended support for Publisher on October 13, 2026, leaving users looking for alternatives to open and edit their existing PUB files. LibreOffice is offering a free solution that allows users to continue working with Publisher documents without Microsoft’s discontinued software.

According to The Document Foundation, LibreOffice can open, view, and edit Microsoft Publisher files through its Draw application.

Publisher reached the end of support alongside Office LTSC 2021, which also stopped receiving security updates on October 13.

LibreOffice Draw can open and edit Publisher files for free

LibreOffice Draw supports Microsoft’s proprietary PUB format, allowing users to import existing Publisher documents and modify their content without installing Publisher.

The functionality relies on the libmspub library, developed by the Document Liberation Project to provide support for Publisher files.

Users can open their existing PUB documents in LibreOffice Draw, make changes to text and layouts, and save their work in OpenDocument Format (ODF).

This provides an alternative to Microsoft’s recommendation that Publisher users convert their documents to PDF or Word before the application’s retirement.

LibreOffice offers more flexibility than PDF and Word conversions

Microsoft previously advised users to preserve their Publisher documents by converting them to PDF or Word files.

However, PDF conversion primarily preserves documents for viewing and printing, making further editing more difficult. Converting complex Publisher layouts to Word’s DOCX format can also introduce formatting issues.

LibreOffice Draw addresses these limitations by allowing users to import and edit Publisher files directly, without first converting them into another format.

However, LibreOffice Draw is not a complete replacement for Microsoft Publisher. Users working with advanced desktop publishing features or complex layouts may encounter compatibility limitations.

For users who primarily need to access and update existing Publisher documents, LibreOffice offers a free way to keep those files usable after Microsoft’s discontinuation of the application.

In other news, LibreOffice recently criticized Microsoft Office for its one-size-fits-all user interface.