Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

How do I open and edit Microsoft publisher documents?

I'll admit I haven't spent much time looking into it but at first glance I couldn't find how to... Any help is much appreciated !!

dabney7 wrote:How do I open and edit Microsoft publisher documents?

The obvious answer
Normally, installing the latest version of Publisher will enable you to edit your files. (I've had issues with newer versions not opening publication files from older versions, but that was some 10 years ago. Should be fixed now.)
1) Install Microsoft Windows (if you haven't already). Publisher is not available for Mac versions of MS Office, it seems.
2) Acquire a license for Publisher (or any MS Office variety that includes it), or a trial version.
(60 day Office 2007 tryouts can be downloaded from MS. The business and professional varieties include Publisher.)
3) Install MS Publisher
4) (Optional, but strongly advised) Convert all your publication files to an open format within the 60 day trial period.

Other options
IIRC you can use Adobe InDesign to open MS Publisher files, but there's always the possibility of losing content and/or layout in the process when you use non-native formats. That's a higher priced application too, so unless you have it it's less of an option, I guess.

Some document conversion services on the web will handle publisher files, but don't count on layout being preserved.
You will probably get most content, so you can import it into other applications for editing.

dabney7 wrote:How do I open and edit Microsoft publisher documents?

I'll admit I haven't spent much time looking into it but at first glance I couldn't find how to... Any help is much appreciated !!

Typing "publisher" into this site's search box (right of the logo) is faster than creating an account. It's even faster than typing an existing account log-in. You get 240+ search results, most of them related to Microsoft Publisher.

Nothing opens Publisher files apart from Publisher.

See: [Solved] Microsoft Publisher on OpenOffice.org.

If this has answered your question please go to your first post and use the Edit button, and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can use the green tick icon at the same time if you like.