About Publican

Publican opens and edits .pub files made with Microsoft Publisher.

Microsoft has announced that Publisher will no longer be available after the 1st of October 2026. Publican exists so that your newsletters, flyers, cards and posters can still be opened, updated and printed.

Your files stay on your device

Publican does all of its work inside your browser. When you open a file, it is read by code running in the browser tab. Edits happen there too, and saving writes the file straight to your device.

On supporting browsers (e.g. Chrome) you also have the option to use your installed fonts to help render the file as originally intended.

Which files open

Every version of Publisher, from Publisher 2.0 in 1993 to Publisher for Microsoft 365. Files saved by Publisher 98 and later open best. Files from Publisher 2.0, 3.0 and 97 open with some limits, and Publican tells you when it has opened one of them.

In versions of Publisher up to 97, the border art styles were included in the software rather than the files, so we are unable to reproduce these.

Editing

Press Edit on an open document to change it, and Done to go back to reading. You can type and format text (font, size, bold, italic, underline and colour), align paragraphs, make bulleted and numbered lists, and add text boxes. Pictures and shapes can be replaced, added, moved, resized, brought forward or sent back, and deleted. Every change can be undone.

Note that we are not yet able to save back into Publisher's .pub format. To print or share your edited document, choose Print or save as PDF. To keep working on it later, choose Save as .publican: that saves an editable copy you can open in Publican again.

Editing is designed for a computer with a mouse or trackpad.

How pages are drawn

Publican lays every page out itself in the browser, using an engine built from the ground up that aims to faithfully reproduce how your .pub files should look.

Since your design is in the browser, you can select text or images like on any website, and files can be viewed on desktop, tablet or phone.

Fonts

A document looks right when the fonts it was made with are available. Publican draws each document with freely licensed fonts that have similar proportions to the originals, served from this site.

If you use Chrome or Edge and have the original fonts installed (Microsoft Office includes most of them), choose Use my installed fonts in the menu to lay the document out with them instead.

Privacy

Publican never sees your .pub files. The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which keeps standard server logs, such as IP addresses, to run and protect the site.

Files you email us to share issues are used only to fix the problem they show, and are deleted afterwards.

To unsubscribe, see what data you have shared with us or have it deleted, email [email protected].

Trademarks

Publican is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft, Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft 365 are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation, referred to here only to describe the files Publican opens.

Contact

Found a file that doesn't open properly? Email [email protected]. Files you send are used only to fix the problem and are deleted afterwards.