The software giant announced that it will no longer support Microsoft Publisher after October 2026. It said that its other Microsoft 365 apps, like Word and PowerPoint, could already accomplish what this program originally set out to do.
Time to Say Goodbye to Microsoft’s InDesign Competitor
Publisher is a desktop publishing app intended for laying out documents — both for print and the web. According to Microsoft’s support document, it was intended for “creating professionally branded templates, printing envelopes and labels, and producing customized calendars, business cards, and programs.” Since Publisher is already included in the Microsoft 365 subscription, users don’t have to worry about purchasing a separate app if they want to layout a document, poster, or even a website.
However, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, which are far more popular, already support the functions that the company outlined. You can download almost any kind of template on Microsoft Create, and if that’s not enough for you, there are many sites from which you can download Microsoft Word templates. Because people are already used to these apps, they’re less likely to open Publisher, especially as it means learning another program.
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Furthermore, as the world transitions more into the digital world, there will be less need for a dedicated publication tool. Graphic design professionals and layout artists might find Publisher a useful and affordable alternative to other desktop publishing tools, but Adobe’s popularity means that they’re more likely to use InDesign over Microsoft’s offering.
Still, if you use Publisher, Microsoft is giving you more than a year to convert your files. All you need to do is open your file in Publisher, go to File > Save as, choose where you want to save it, and then select PDF as the file type and hit Save. You can then open the PDF file in Microsoft Word and save it there as a Doc file for later editing. This might make some weird changes to your document, especially if it has a lot of graphics, but you can at least edit it there.
If you need the functionality that Publisher delivers, you can pick Adobe InDesign, especially if you’re using it for your job or business. But if you don’t want to spend money and do not need the core features of InDesign, Canva offers similar functionality. You can check out our comparison of Canva and InDesign if you can’t decide which one is for you.
