BERLIN: Microsoft ended support for Publisher, its desktop publishing software, in mid-October. The company is now advising users to preserve old .pub files as PDFs or convert them to .docx format.
However, these are not the only options and may not be the best ones for everyone who still regularly uses .pub templates to produce print publications such as posters or calendars, or to publish email newsletters, says the Document Foundation, the organisation behind the free office suite LibreOffice.
The formatting in complex documents can be badly disrupted when they are converted to .docx, so LibreOffice developers have reverse-engineered the .pub format, making it possible to open .pub files in LibreOffice Draw, save them in the open OpenDocument format (ODF) and edit them.
LibreOffice Draw will also eventually reach its limits when it comes to layout, since it is a graphics programme rather than a desktop publishing application. But it can easily be used to edit small, multi-page documents such as newsletters or single-page documents of any format.
For more demanding layouts, the Document Foundation recommends Scribus, a free desktop publishing programme. Like LibreOffice, it is available for Windows, macOS and Linux, among other operating systems, but does not use a standard file format. – dpa
