Microsoft is retiring Publisher.

Microsoft has confirmed that Publisher will no longer be supported, and will no longer be included with Microsoft 365, from the 1^stof October 2026.

>> Read Microsoft's announcement here <<

After that date, Publisher files don't just lose support. They become difficult, and in many cases impossible, to open, edit, or reuse. If a Publisher file has sat untouched since it was filed, the risk is that nobody discovers the problem until they need it again.
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Where these files actually are

Publisher was never a niche tool. Event flyers. Newsletters. Signage. Tender documents. Internal forms someone built once and everyone ha used since. Files like this tend to get created, used for their purpose, and then left exactly where they were saved.

That's usually SharePoint Online or Teams. But Publisher files also turn up in OneDrive, on network file shares, and in whatever other systems have been used to store documents over the years. Anywhere a Publisher file has ever been saved is a place it can now go quietly out of reach.

The risk isn't only that someone loses a file they use every week. It's that someone goes looking for a file they haven't needed in two years, and it's unable to be opened.

What we can do about it

We can scan an environment for Publisher files, report on what's found, and convert what needs converting to PDF, with the file's metadata retained. We built this from Microsoft's own example conversion script and adapted it so it can run properly at scale across an environment rather than one file at a time.

We can also help identify current Publisher usage, including anyone still creating or opening Publisher files. That's a different problem to the old files sitting untouched.

Someone actively creating new Publisher documents today needs to know what to use instead, not just what to convert. Most of what Publisher's used for already has a home in Word or PowerPoint, so knowing who's still creating files means we can point them there before the deadline, not after.

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What's involved, in practical terms:

The conversion has to run on a machine with Publisher installed and licensed. Publisher is what actually opens the file and exports it, so there's no way around that requirement.

The output quality is Publisher's own PDF export. We're not improving on what Publisher itself produces, just applying it consistently and at scale.

We need authenticated access to whatever's being scanned and converted, whether that's specific SharePoint sites and Teams, or OneDrive, network shares, and other locations if the scope extends further.

We can run the conversion from a machine on your network with the right access already in place, or, with your approval, work from temporary local copies of the files. Any local copies are used only for the conversion and deleted the moment it's done.

Before anything starts, we'll confirm the approach, what access is needed, what you'll get back, how long it will take, and how the converted files should be returned or stored.

Where this leaves you

Publisher files found and converted before they become difficult, or potentially impossible, to reuse. No file discovered too late because nobody knew it was there. No manual hunting through sites, shares, and storage you'd otherwise have to check one by one.

If you'd like us to run this for your environment, get in touch and we'll confirm the details.

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