Microsoft has announced that it will no longer support MS Publisher from Oct 2026. It was always bundled with MS-office packages as a graphics / publishing tool, but will no longer be updated.
I don’t use it or other alternatives often enough to have a real opinion, but I did find it simple to use and play with, unlike a lot of other drawing and compositional programs which assume some continuing familiarity and adeptness. I have some .PUB files I still use but will need to convert or re-create these.
In the past I have used it to compose conference posters, newsletters and things with mixes of pics and words where you want to shunt, squeeze, embiggen or fine-tune them until they look just right. Trying that in Word or Powerpoint is a good way to make your brain explode, and never looks any good.
What alternatives can you recommend that are:
Free / negligible cost
Easy for the stupid, lazy or older dog who cannot learn new tricks to use
Produce a decent quality A5, A4, A3 or A2 size output
Canva is what everyone I know has moved to. Does in minutes what used to take hours in Publisher, and ends up looking a lot better too. But it’s online only.
For offline you can try the free Affinity or the libre Scribus, but neither is as simple or easy to use as Publisher was.
Adobe InDesign is the behemoth, but it’s very expensive (subscription based) and has a steep learning curve. It runs circles around Publisher once you know it though.
Well, you can continue to do what I do in these situations, and simply continue to use it as long it works in your version of Windows, which will likely be a long time. Just know that it won’t be getting updates, which can actually be considered a feature, not a bug!
Microsoft claims it’s being discontinued due to decreasing demand and “an aging code base”, which I take to actually mean “not suitable for a ripoff subscription based ‘cloud’ model”. They offer Word, Powerpoint, and Microsoft Designer as alternatives. I did use Publisher briefly in the distant past and nothing comes to mind that cannot be done just fine with those other tools.
As @Reply says, the designer guys I used to work with loved Canva.
Easier, faster than MS Publisher. Plus a number of file “save as” options, which I believe includes MS Publisher.
(Note, I am a nerd, not a designer, and the rare visual presentations I make, I use Google Slides, which is not really comparable. So take with as much salt as you care to pinch)
Powerpoint has a limitation of 56 inches in either dimension so I agree, Publisher was a lot better when I was regularly making large posters. I found it the most convenient. Some people I know would use Adobe Illustrator, or Inkscape (free) for making them in .svg format, which allows you to infinitely scale the elements for large poster printing. The learning curve is steeper there. LibreOffice Impress is their version of Powerpoint but I’m not sure if there’s a max size.
It’s always lagged behind their other software. For example, when they introduced the ribbon around 2007, Word, Excel, Powerpoint got it, but Publisher didn’t until later.
If you’re gonna go this route (of learning new software anyway), Affinity might be better suited? It combines both vector editing (like Inkscape/Illustrator) and page layout (like Publisher/InDesign) into the same free app and you just click a tab to switch between the two modes.
It’s actually a pretty nice app, way easier to use than Inkspace and similar to a lighterweight Illustrator-InDesign hybrid. It used to be a paid app before Canva bought it and made it free as a way to upsell some of their AI features, but those are entirely optional and can be ignored. The base editor app is very powerful and polished, especially for being free. I used to have an Adobe sub for commercial work, but now Affinity does the job more than well enough for home use.
I wouldn’t say Affinity can directly replace Publisher (it’s more powerful and professional, so slightly higher learning curve), but it’s a great app in its own right as long as you can put in the couple hours or so to learn the basics.