How to convert .pub files to Word or Affinity Publisher (and what you'll lose)

The honest answer to “how do I convert my .pub files” is that you can get the words out easily, the pictures out with some effort, and the layout out almost never. Knowing that in advance saves a lot of frustration.

Why .pub is hard to open

Publisher’s file format was only ever meant to be read by Publisher. Microsoft never published it as an open standard and no other program licensed it, so every tool that opens a .pub file is doing so by working out the format from the outside. That is why results vary between tools, and between files.

There is a second problem that is really about how Publisher works. A Publisher page is a pile of independent boxes, each pinned to an exact spot. Word does not think that way — it thinks in terms of text that flows from one page to the next. Converting the first into the second means guessing what the author meant, and the guesses show up as text boxes in the wrong place, images that jump, and fonts that quietly change.

So the question is not really “how do I convert everything.” It is “what do I actually need out of these files.”

Method A: save as PDF — do this one regardless

In Publisher: File > Save as, choose a location, then pick PDF as the file type and save.

Microsoft’s own end-of-support page gives exactly these steps, and this is the one job with a real deadline, because after October 1, 2026 subscription users will not have Publisher to do it with.

A PDF is a faithful photograph of the page. Every position, every font, every image, exactly as it printed. What it is not is editable in any comfortable way — but for an archive, that is the point.

It is also a useful bridge. Affinity can open a PDF and, depending on how the PDF was made, keep the text editable. Affinity’s help is careful about the caveat: “if text and vectors were kept editable on export, they remain editable in Affinity; if the PDF was flattened or rasterized, the content arrives as images.” Its import dialog has a Favor editable text over fidelity option, which tells you the trade-off in four words. Missing fonts get substituted, so check anything with unusual type.

Method B: Publisher’s own Save As Word

Publisher can save to a Word document directly, and Microsoft’s documentation on it is refreshingly honest about what you get. The key sentence: “you cannot save your entire publication — all text, graphics, and layout — in a Word document in one step.”

The same page spells out what does not survive: “Graphics in the publication are not preserved”, “design elements such as graphics and columns are not preserved”, and “Page breaks in the publication are ignored”. Headers and footers keep their content but lose the header-and-footer behaviour.

In other words, this is a text export wearing a Word file’s clothes. That is genuinely useful when what you want is the words — a year of notices, a list of contacts, the text of a service — without retyping them. It is not a way to move a designed page.

There is also a route Microsoft recommends that goes the other way round: save the .pub as a PDF, then open that PDF in Word (File > Open, pick the PDF, select OK). Word rebuilds it as an editable document. Microsoft’s caveat is worth quoting because it sets expectations correctly: “The converted Word document will be optimized for text editing. As a result, its layout may vary from the original PDF — particularly if the document includes many graphics.”

Simple, text-heavy pages come through this route surprisingly well. Anything with a lot of boxes and pictures arrives scrambled.

Method C: LibreOffice Draw

LibreOffice is free, and LibreOffice Draw can import Publisher files. The official list of conversion filters includes “Microsoft Publisher 98-2010” with the extension .pub.

Note the version range, because it is the one hard limitation LibreOffice actually documents: the filter targets Publisher 98 through 2010. There is no export back to .pub, so this is a one-way door — open the file, then save as PDF or ODG, or copy what you need out of it.

In my own testing, how well a file comes through varies a lot with how complicated it is. A simple flyer is fine. A four-page bulletin with overlapping boxes needs tidying. That is my observation rather than anything LibreOffice publishes, so treat it as a reason to check each file rather than a rule.

Method D: paid converters, and bulk conversion

Commercial tools exist. OmniMarkz from Markzware previews and converts .pub files alongside InDesign and QuarkXPress documents, aimed at print shops and design studios, priced accordingly. PubConvert is a web service that converts .pub to PDF, Word, IDML for InDesign or Affinity, or ODG for LibreOffice Draw, for a one-off fee.

I am naming them because people ask what exists, not because I have a view on either. If you go this route, test one file before you pay for a batch, and think about whether you want to upload your members’ details to a web service.

If you have hundreds of files and Publisher is still installed, Microsoft’s end-of-support page acknowledges both third-party converters and a PowerShell script for bulk conversion — while noting that “Microsoft does not provide support for them.” A script that saves every .pub in a folder to PDF overnight is a reasonable use of an afternoon if the alternative is opening four hundred files by hand.

What I would actually do

Archive everything as PDF now, while Publisher still runs. That is the part with a deadline, and it protects the whole back catalogue in one pass.

Then ignore conversion for everything else. Look at what your office prints on a schedule — it will be three to five documents, not three hundred — and rebuild those from templates. A rebuilt bulletin takes an afternoon and then works properly for years. A converted one takes an afternoon and then fights you every week, because you inherited someone else’s guesses about where the boxes go.

If that is the route you take, our template pack has the usual documents already built for Word and Affinity, in US Letter and A4, and there is a free bulletin template if you want to see how it feels first.