Press
Publican is a free web app that opens, edits and prints Microsoft Publisher (.pub) files in any browser, without Publisher. Microsoft is retiring Publisher in October 2026, and Microsoft offers no viewer for its files. Publican keeps newsletters, bulletins, flyers and cards made over three decades of Publisher usable, on Windows, Mac, Chromebook, tablet or phone.
Key facts
- Free, with no sign-up, no paid tier and nothing to install.
- Private: files are read inside the browser tab and never uploaded.
- Every version: opens files from Publisher 2.0 (1993) to Publisher for Microsoft 365.
- Editing: text and its formatting, paragraphs and lists, text boxes, pictures and shapes, with undo. Edited documents print or save as PDF, or save as an editable .publican file. It does not yet save back to .pub.
- Its own engine: a layout engine written from scratch in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly, which parses the file and lays out every page the way Publisher does.
- Works offline once installed as an app from Chrome or Edge, and then opens .pub files with a double-click.
How faithful it is
We compared every page of a test set of real, difficult .pub files with the PDFs Publisher 2021 itself exports, for Publican and for LibreOffice, whose .pub reader also powers Scribus and many online converters.
| Publican | LibreOffice 26.8 | |
|---|---|---|
| Sees the correct number of pages | 100% | 82% |
| Places text on the correct page | 99.6% | 84% |
| Pages without defects | 97% | 51% |
September 2026. A defect is text missing from the page or content badly out of place.
Publisher's retirement
Microsoft 365 subscribers lose Publisher on 1 October 2026; Publisher 2021, the last version sold outright, loses support on 13 October 2026. There is no replacement. The details, with links to Microsoft's announcements, are on what happens to your files.
Images
Free to use in coverage of Publican.
- Share image (PNG, 1200 × 630)
- Icon (PNG, 512 × 512) and as SVG
Contact
Questions, interviews or files to try: [email protected].