Microsoft To End Support For Publisher

From an email received from MS and as a heads up for those exhibitors who have their pages saved on Publisher or those with album pages using this format:

"Beginning October 01, 2026, Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported as part of Microsoft 365. Many common Publisher scenarios are available in other Microsoft 365 apps, including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Designer.

Action Recommended: Before October 01, 2026, convert your existing Publisher files to PDF or Word format. After this date, you will no longer be able to open or edit these files with Microsoft Publisher."

I would think it is disappointing that they don't offer a migration path to transition existing Publisher files to some other publishing oriented format. I can understand saving static files to a final PDF format, but if I had an evolving publication that I created with Publisher, I would hate the thought of rebuilding in in a new publishing application.

Unfortunate. Word distinctly does not equal Publisher.

It's a concession that Adobe crushed them in this market.

I disagree. I worked in commercial offset printing and textbook publishing for the majority of my career, including a 12-year stint as a digital prepress technician, when I had a Mac on one side of my desk and a PC on the other, preflighting customer files.

Microsoft has NEVER had a competing product for anything Adobe offered in the desktop publishing arena. Publisher has never been a competitor for InDesign, or before it PageMaker, or other industry stalwarts like QuarkXpress.

Publisher has always been considered "Word Plus" or a poor-man's desktop publishing package.

Especially in recent years, it's been a solution in search of a problem. I'm surprised that Microsoft kept it going as long as they did...

They surely did not invest much effort in improving it.