Everything you use in Publisher, and what's coming.

Opening your files

• Open .pub files

  Yes

  Opens files from Publisher 2000 through Microsoft 365, with no Publisher on your computer. Publisher 2000 files have a few limits, below.

• Publisher 2000 files

  Partial

  They open and edit, though text doesn’t wrap around pictures and shapes, and some shapes draw as plain rectangles.

• Publisher 97 and 98 files

  Partial

  PubKeep offers to upgrade the file on our secure server first, which needs the internet, and deletes it from the server as soon as it's done.

• Everything in the file

  Partial

  Text, pictures, shapes, tables, Word art, and backgrounds come across as you made them. Border art and pattern and texture fills draw too. A few things don’t draw exactly yet: vertical Word art, some older WMF and EMF drawings, and a few rare shapes. If a file uses one of these, PubKeep tells you when it opens.

• Clip art and framed photos

  Yes

  Older Publisher files and templates show their clip art, lettering, and framed photos, on the page and in the page thumbnails.

• Your installed fonts

  Yes

  Uses the fonts installed on your computer, including Gotham Narrow, condensed Helvetica Neue, and Office cloud fonts that Microsoft 365 already downloaded. Fonts in the older Type 1 format (.pfb and .pfm files) work too.

• Fonts

  Yes

  Uses the fonts on your computer. If a file uses a font you don’t have, PubKeep tells you which one and shows the font it’s using instead, just like Publisher. After you install that font, quit PubKeep and open it again. The font list also offers Google Fonts, and Browse Google Fonts shows them by category, each drawn in its own face.

• Save your work

  Yes

  Saves to .pubk, an open format. PubKeep does not save back to .pub. On a big file, pressing Save again while a save is still running waits its turn. If a save can’t finish, PubKeep tells you why and keeps your work open. Saving works alongside OneDrive, antivirus, and backup software. If Windows ransomware protection blocks a save, PubKeep shows how to allow it or save somewhere else.

• Shared folders and Read-Only

  Yes

  While you have a publication open, no one else can save over it from a shared folder. If someone else already has it open, or the file is read-only, PubKeep opens it Read-Only and Save asks you to save a copy. File > Open also has Open Read-Only, for when you only want to look.

• Crash recovery

  Yes

  If PubKeep ever stops unexpectedly, it restarts and offers to bring your unsaved work back. It also keeps a recovery copy of your work while you edit, every 3 minutes unless you change it in File > Options > Save.

• Long sessions

  Yes

  A long editing session with a big file stays quick, without PubKeep using more and more memory as you go. Deleting, undoing, and resizing text boxes stay fast in large publications like catalogs.

• Save As and file folders

  Yes

  Save As starts with your current file name. In Options, choose the folder where Open and Save As start. A file you already opened uses its own folder.

• Recent files

  Yes

  The Home screen keeps your last 50 files, with Recent and Favorites tabs and a search box. Click the star next to a file to keep it at the top of the list. Right-click a file to open it, copy where it’s saved, add it to Favorites, or remove it from the list. File > Options > Advanced sets how many recent files to show.

• Double-click to open

  Yes

  On Windows, PubKeep can open your Publisher files when you double-click them. If Publisher still opens them, PubKeep takes you to the Windows setting that changes it.

Editing and layout

• Text boxes

  Yes

  Draw a text box and type right on the page, or double-click any existing box to edit it. Right-click while typing for Cut, Copy, Paste, spelling suggestions, Change Text, Text Fit, and Format Text Box. A text box moves when you press on or just outside its border, even while you’re typing in it. A new text box starts at your publication’s normal text size. Drag to select text past the edge of the window and the page scrolls with you. Text Direction turns a box’s text to run top to bottom.

• Drag text

  Yes

  Drag selected text to move it within a text box, into another text box, or into a table cell. Hold Ctrl (Option on a Mac) to copy it.

• Paste formatting

  Yes

  Copying and pasting keeps line breaks, bold, sizes, fonts, and alignment, from inside PubKeep or from Word and the web. Paste > Keep Text Only pastes plain text. Merge Formatting makes pasted text match the font, size, and color around it. Find it on the Paste menu or the (Ctrl) button that shows up after you paste.

• Text formatting

  Yes

  Font, size, color, bold, italic, underline, alignment, line and paragraph spacing, indents, character spacing, and tabs.

• Text styles

  Yes

  Home > Styles lists the text styles in your publication. Click one to apply it. Create, change, rename, and delete styles, and every paragraph that uses a style changes with it. Import Styles brings the styles from another Publisher or PubKeep file. Press Enter at the end of a paragraph and the next one uses the style set to follow it. New Style and Modify Style also set bullets and numbering, text effects like shadow and glow, and a line above or below the paragraph. The Styles section in the Properties pane shows the style where you’re typing, and one click applies another.

• Format Painter

  Yes

  Copy formatting from one place to another. Double-click Format Painter to apply it to several places, then press Esc or click it again to stop.

• Text fill, outline, and effects

  Yes

  Text Fill, Text Outline, and Text Effects are on the ribbon and in the Properties pane for text boxes and table cells. Add a shadow, reflection, or glow to your words, or fill them with one of Publisher’s 20 preset gradients.

• Bullets and numbering

  Yes

  Bulleted lists, plus numbered lists as 1, 2, 3 or a, b, c or I, II, III. Pressing Enter twice, or choosing Bullets > None, ends a bulleted list.

• Columns and linked text boxes

  Yes

  Split a text box into columns, or link boxes so a story flows from one to the next, including across pages. You can delete a page or a text box in the middle of linked boxes and the story stays linked. Create Link and Break Link work the way they do in Publisher.

• Text fit

  Yes

  Best Fit, Shrink Text on Overflow, and Grow Text Box to Fit all work. A text box set to Grow Text Box to Fit in Publisher keeps that setting when you open the file.

• Drop caps

  Yes

  Ready-made styles, or make your own with Custom Drop Cap: dropped or raised, how many lines tall, 1 to 15 letters, Lines up for a letter that sits partly above the line, and your own font, style, and color. A drop cap stays with its paragraph when the paragraph moves to the next page or column.

• Text wrap

  Yes

  Square, Tight, Through, and Top and Bottom, plus custom wrap points from your Publisher files, wrap text the way Publisher does. Edit Wrap Points lets you drag a picture’s wrap points yourself.

• Master pages

  Yes

  Edit your file's master pages, or add, duplicate, rename, and delete them, including two-page masters. Apply a master to all pages, the current page, or a range, or choose (None). Pages set to no master in Publisher open that way. Guides and backgrounds you set on a master page show on every page that uses that master, and guides stay visible over a page background.

• Headers, footers, page numbers

  Yes

  Add them from the Insert tab, and they repeat on every page that uses the master. Right-click a page in the Pages list and choose Page Numbers to start at a different number, pick a number style, or hide the number on the first page. Insert > Page Number places the number at the top or bottom of the page, left, center, or right, or inside the text box you are in.

• Multi-page documents

  Yes

  Add, duplicate, delete, and drag pages into a new order, and view facing pages as a two-page spread. Drag a spread to move both pages together, and PubKeep asks before splitting a spread, like Publisher. Right-click a page in the Pages pane to duplicate, delete, move, or rename it, or to copy it and paste it into another publication. A stray click on a page picture can’t copy or delete a page.

• Page sizes

  Yes

  Letter, Legal, Tabloid, Executive, A3, A4, A5, B4, and B5, in either orientation, plus your own saved custom sizes. More Preset Page Sizes has Publisher’s Publication Types, like booklets, business cards, envelopes, greeting cards, postcards, and mailing labels.

• Rulers and guides

  Yes

  Rulers that show where your pointer is, margin guides, guides you drag out from the ruler, and smart guides that line objects up with each other and the page. Page Design > Guides adds column and grid presets and a Grid and Baseline Guides dialog, with Snap to Guides and Snap to Objects. The top ruler has Publisher’s indent and tab markers: drag them to indent a paragraph, or click the ruler to set a tab stop. Increase and Decrease Indent move by half an inch. Page Design > Guides > Ruler Guides lets you type exact positions for your guides.

• Page background

  Yes

  Any color, preset or custom gradients, or a picture stretched to fill the page, on the current page or all pages. A background picture has a Transparency setting in the Page pane. Fill Effects adds pattern and texture backgrounds.

• Undo and redo

  Yes

  Step back through your last 100 changes, and forward again.

• Find and replace

  Yes

  Search the whole publication, with match case and whole word, and replace one at a time or all at once.

• Spell check

  Partial

  Red squiggles as you type, with suggestions, for American and British English. File > Options > Proofing can import the words you added to Publisher’s dictionary. Text in other languages is checked as American English.

• Hebrew text

  Yes

  Hebrew text reads right to left, with the same alignment, fonts, and bullets as in Publisher. Right-to-Left and Left-to-Right buttons switch a paragraph’s direction. Bold, italic, and font size apply to Hebrew too.

• Hyphenation

  Partial

  Automatic hyphenation with an adjustable zone, for American English text.

• Design Checker

  Yes

  Before you print, Design Checker lists text that overflows its box, objects off the page or too close to its edge, blurry pictures, missing fonts, and empty picture frames.

• Layers and the Properties pane

  Yes

  See every object on the page in a list, rename, reorder, hide, or lock it, and change its settings in one place.

• Arrange objects

  Yes

  Group, align, distribute, rotate, and flip. Bring Forward and Send Backward move an object one step, and the arrow next to each has Bring to Front and Send to Back. Hold Ctrl (Option on a Mac) while you drag to drop a copy, or Shift to keep the drag straight. Click a group once to select it, and again to select one item inside it, like Publisher. Select several objects to resize or rotate them together, set their Width and Height, or change Shape Fill and Outline for all of them at once.

• Hyperlinks

  Yes

  Links in your files keep their targets. Insert > Link or Ctrl+K adds a link to a web page, a page in the publication, or an email address, and right-click lets you edit, open, or remove one. Links stay clickable in exported PDFs.

• Symbols

  Yes

  Insert > Symbol adds common symbols such as ©, ™, †, and ½, plus other special characters.

• Date and time

  Yes

  Insert > Date & Time puts today’s date or the time at your cursor, in the format you pick. Turn on Update automatically and the date stays current each time you open, print, or export the publication. Dates set to update in your Publisher files stay current too.

• Insert a Word or text file

  Yes

  Insert > Insert File brings in the text of a Word document, a text file, or a web page, with its formatting, paragraph spacing, and pictures. It goes where your cursor is, or in a new text box.

• Business Information

  Yes

  Insert > Business Information adds your name, job title, organization, address, phone and email, tagline, and website as fields. Save them as named sets and use them in any publication. Change a set and every field that shows it updates. Business Information in your Publisher files comes in as the same live fields.

• Ribbon and shortcuts

  Yes

  The Insert tab is grouped like Publisher’s: Pages, Tables, Illustrations, Building Blocks, Text, Links, and Header & Footer. Hide the ribbon down to its tabs with Ribbon Display Options or Ctrl+F1. Help > Keyboard Shortcuts lists every shortcut, and you can search it.

• Zoom

  Yes

  Zoom like Publisher: the minus and plus buttons step by 10 percent, or use the slider, Ctrl+scroll, or F9. A publication reopens at the zoom and scroll position you left it at.

• Laptop screens

  Yes

  The Pages pane is compact. On a smaller screen, it sizes itself to the window, the Properties pane collapses out of the way, and notices take a single slim row.

Pictures and design

• Insert pictures

  Yes

  JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WebP, and SVG, from a file or dragged onto the page. Insert > Pictures lets you choose several at once, and they wait beside the page as small pictures, ready to drag into place, like Publisher. Pasting several picture files does the same. A pasted picture keeps its real size. Scanned TIFFs, like sheet music, show on the page and when you print or export a PDF. You can also insert an empty picture placeholder to fill later.

• Online pictures and icons

  Yes

  Insert > Online Pictures searches free photos online. Insert > Icons adds simple line icons, with a search box.

• Crop pictures

  Yes

  Crop to a rectangle, or to a shape with Picture shapes. Picture Format > Crop also has Fit to show the whole picture in its frame, Fill to cover the frame, and Clear Crop. Pictures that Publisher already cropped to a shape keep it.

• Picture shapes

  Yes

  Crop a picture to a shape: oval, rounded rectangle, heart, star, arrow and 40 more, with the border and shadow following the shape.

• Adjust and replace pictures

  Yes

  Brightness, contrast, borders, and Change Picture to swap in a new one. Picture Format > Recolor has Grayscale, Sepia, Cyanotype, and Washout. To use a picture you copied, select the picture and press Ctrl+V, or choose Change Picture > From Clipboard. You can set a transparent color, and a Transparency setting for how see-through the picture is, in the Properties pane and in Format Picture. Pictures keep their proportions when you type a new height or width, with Lock aspect ratio on the Size tab, like Publisher.

• Picture styles

  Yes

  Picture Styles gallery with 19 one-click presets: white and black frames, double frame, drop shadow, soft edges, reflection, and oval, rounded and dashed styles.

• Copy pictures

  Yes

  Copy a picture, shape, or any selection and paste it into Word or another app as a picture.

• Alt text

  Yes

  Describe a picture or shape for people who use screen readers.

• Shapes

  Yes

  Rectangles, ovals, stars, hearts, arrows, lines, connectors, and more, with solid or gradient fills and custom outlines. Freeform and scribble shapes from your Publisher files open with their real outline. Set borders on individual sides of text boxes, rectangles, and pictures, like a colored left and right side with no top or bottom.

• Border art

  Yes

  Add border art to text boxes, pictures, and rectangles from a starter set of designs. Border art in your Publisher files draws too, including border art you recolored.

• Gradient fills

  Yes

  Fill Effects gives you one-color, two-color, and preset gradients, transparency, shading styles and variants, angles, and extra color stops.

• Pattern, texture, and picture fills

  Yes

  Fill Effects has Publisher’s Pattern and Texture tabs for shapes, text boxes, and page backgrounds. Pattern and texture fills in your Publisher files draw as Publisher drew them. The Picture tab fills a shape with a picture, stretched or tiled.

• Colors

  Yes

  Every color menu works like Publisher. It shows your publication’s scheme colors, with lighter and darker shades, the standard colors, and your recent colors. More Colors lets you pick any color by RGB or hex, and set transparency for fills. You can copy a color’s hex code to use it somewhere else. You can also pick CMYK colors, or a named spot ink like a PANTONE color, and they print and export as true CMYK and spot colors for a commercial printer.

• Color schemes

  Yes

  Page Design > Schemes recolors your whole publication with any of Publisher’s built-in color schemes. Colors you pick from Scheme Colors follow the scheme when you change it.

• Shadows and shape effects

  Yes

  Add a shadow from the presets or Shadow Options, plus glow and soft edges, to shapes, pictures, and text boxes. They show on screen, in print, and in PDFs.

• Word art

  Partial

  Publisher-style Word art stays editable. Bold and italic show on the page, in print, and in PDFs. All 40 Word art shapes draw their shape, including the curves, waves, and Curve Down, and Change Shape offers every one. Vertical Word art draws horizontally for now. From the Word art tab, give Word art a solid or gradient fill, an outline, and a shadow, reflection, glow, or soft edges. Gradient fills draw through the letters.

• Tables

  Partial

  Insert tables, click into even short rows, resize rows and columns like Publisher, add and remove rows and columns, distribute rows and columns evenly, merge and split cells, resize, shade cells, and set borders. Align the text in a cell to the top, middle, or bottom, as well as left, center, or right. While you type, words show in their real font and size, and bold or a new size shows right away. Text Fill, Text Outline, and Text Effects work in table cells too. Table styles (the Table Formats gallery) are not built yet. Pasting a range from Excel keeps its column widths, row heights, merged cells, colors, fonts, and borders. The Table Layout tab has Cell Margins and View Gridlines. Copy a table and paste it into Excel as rows and columns.

• Embedded Excel worksheets

  Partial

  Excel worksheets embedded in your Publisher file show and print as pictures. Editing them inside PubKeep is not supported yet.

• Calendars

  Yes

  File > New > Calendars builds a whole calendar at once, one month per page or a full year on a page, and Set Calendar Dates changes the dates later. Or insert a calendar in one of four editable designs, then change the month and year, the first day of the week, and weekend shading. Notes stay in their cells when the month changes.

• QR codes

  Yes

  Insert a QR code from the Insert tab. It stays editable, so you can change what it holds and how it looks in the Properties pane. Use website from Business Information makes the code follow your website, so it stays current when the address changes.

Mail merge and labels

• Mail merge from Excel or CSV

  Yes

  Connect an Excel workbook or a CSV file as your list. Outlook contacts need to be exported to a CSV file first. The sort and filter you saved on your list in Publisher carry over. When you reopen a publication, PubKeep shows where its list came from, with Update from file to pull in the latest.

• Type a new list

  Yes

  The Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard lets you type names and addresses into a new list.

• Choose recipients

  Yes

  Check or uncheck who to include, and find a recipient by name. Mailings > Select Recipients > Cancel Merge removes a list. Choosing a new list asks first, then replaces the old one.

• Merge fields and preview

  Yes

  Insert any column from your list into your text, then step through each record to see how it looks. A merge field acts as one piece: click it to select the whole field.

• Merge to printer

  Yes

  Print every record, or only the ones you pick.

• Merge to a new publication

  Yes

  Create one publication with a copy for every record, which you can save or export as a single PDF.

• Address Block and Greeting Line

  Yes

  Mailings > Address Block and Greeting Line open Publisher’s dialogs, with the same name formats, a preview of each recipient, and Match Fields. Each recipient gets their own address and greeting when you preview, print, merge, or export a PDF.

• Avery label sheets

  Yes

  38 Avery products are built in. US Letter: 5160, 5161, 5162, 5163, 5167, 5168, 5871 business cards, 6876, 22205 round labels, 5392 name badges, and 3263 and 5389 postcards, plus the same sheets sold as 5260, 5960, 8160 to 8163, 8167, 8168, 8460, 18160, 18163, and 18167. Avery A4 labels L7160 to L7173 are under Manufacturers > Avery A4/A5. If you use a different Avery product, tell us which one.

• Mail merge onto labels

  Partial

  To print one record on each label, choose Multiple pages per sheet in the Print pane. Otherwise each record fills a whole sheet. Copies of each page prints each record several times in a row, like three name labels per person, and Start row and Start column skip labels you already used.

• Label printers

  Yes

  Labels print at their own size and the right way around on a label printer, and File > Print has a Custom size choice under Paper.

• Catalog Merge

  Partial

  Insert > Catalog Pages lays out one entry, and the Catalog Format tab connects your list, sets Rows and Columns and Fill Order, and adds text fields. Merge to New, Add to Existing, or Print fills each page with entries from your list. Picture fields, Repeating Areas, and ready-made layouts are not built yet.

Templates

Start from a built-in template, or one of your own, then make it yours. We add new templates regularly.

• Bulletins and programs

  Yes

  Folded church bulletins on Letter or Legal paper, a concert program, a memorial program, and an appreciation dinner program. The Parish Bulletin template is on the Home screen.

• Newsletters

  Yes

  A four-page newsletter, plus holiday and fall editions.

• Flyers

  Yes

  An event flyer in Letter and A4 sizes, and a pancake breakfast flyer.

• Certificates

  Yes

  Certificates of appreciation, achievement, completion, and recognition.

• Greeting and thank-you cards

  Yes

  A folded birthday card, a 5 x 7 birthday card that prints two to a sheet, and three folded thank-you cards.

• Calendars

  Yes

  Monthly, classic, church, family, banner, and wallet calendars, plus a chalkboard classroom calendar.

• Labels

  Yes

  Return address labels on Avery 5160.

• Your own templates

  Yes

  Save any publication as a template with File > Save As > PubKeep Template, then start new ones from File > New > Personal. On Windows, the templates you saved in Publisher show up there too.

Printing and PDF

• Print

  Yes

  Pick your printer, copies, pages, paper size, and color or grayscale, with a live preview of each sheet. The paper list shows only the sizes your printer has, and PubKeep tells you when a saved paper size isn’t available. Statement (5.5 x 8.5 in) is one of the paper sizes. On Windows, Printer Properties opens your printer’s settings, like Publisher. PubKeep tells you where to choose the paper tray in the system print window. Print and Export PDF use the print settings saved with your publication, like paper size, two-sided, and grayscale, and PubKeep keeps your choices with the publication when you print and save. A page bigger than your paper, like a banner, prints Tiled across several sheets. Envelopes print on your printer’s envelope paper. Start a second print before the first finishes and both print, one after the other.

• Booklet printing

  Yes

  Side-fold booklets print in the right page order to fold down the middle. On Windows, booklets and other layouts that turn the paper print landscape, the way the preview shows them. Sideways text along the edge of a booklet master page shows the right way up. Right-hand booklet pages show in the page thumbnails. Pictures and backgrounds that cross a reading spread appear on the right printed sheets. A small booklet prints as many times as fit on each sheet, like Publisher.

• Folded cards

  Yes

  Page Setup and Create New Page Size offer all four of Publisher’s folds: quarter-sheet side fold, quarter-sheet top fold, half-sheet side fold, and half-sheet top fold. Cards print and export folded, like Publisher, and folded cards from your Publisher files keep their fold.

• Print on both sides

  Yes

  Two-sided printing on the long or short edge, or manual two-sided that tells you when to flip the paper.

• Several per sheet

  Yes

  Print several copies of a small page, or several different pages, on one sheet of paper. Layout Options sets the margins and gaps, updates the preview as you type, and has Start row and Start column for a label sheet you already started.

• Business cards

  Yes

  Avery 5871 is a page size choice, and business cards print 10 per sheet, the same as in Publisher. An empty Business Information field stays blank.

• Export to PDF

  Yes

  Export all pages, the current page, or a page range as a print-ready PDF, with fonts embedded and text kept as real text. Keep each page its own size, or place it centered on Letter or A4 paper, like Publisher. Windows fonts that come as a font collection, like Cambria, export correctly too. The Layout choice arranges pages on each PDF page like File > Print, so a booklet can export as printed sheets or as single pages in reading order. Export uses the same quality settings as Publisher, so photos stay sharp, color blends stay smooth, and Word art and headings with effects stay crisp. Choose a quality for smaller files, everyday printing, high-quality printing, or commercial printing. You can also choose PDF in File > Save As, with Open file after publishing, like Publisher.

• Save as a picture

  Yes

  Save a page, every page, or just a selection as a JPEG or PNG, for email or social media, at 96, 150, or 300 dpi. File > Save As also lists JPEG and PNG for the current page.

Platforms and pricing

• Windows

  Yes

  Runs on 64-bit Windows.

• Mac

  Yes

  Runs on Macs with Apple silicon or Intel, so your .pub files open on a Mac for the first time.

• Languages

  Yes

  Menus and dialogs are available in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish and Portuguese (Brazil). PubKeep follows your computer’s language, and File > Options > Language changes it.

• Convert without opening

  Yes

  Right-click a .pub or .pubk file to make a PDF, JPG, or PNG without opening it. On Windows, choose PubKeep > Convert in File Explorer. On a Mac, choose Quick Actions in Finder. The new file is saved next to the original.

• Automatic updates

  Yes

  New versions download in the background, and you restart when it suits you. On a Mac, Restart to update asks whether to save your changes first.

• Themes

  Yes

  Pick Colorful or Dark in File > Options > General, or Use system setting to follow your computer.

• Free 7-day trial

  Yes

  Start a free 7-day trial right inside PubKeep with just your email, no waiting for a key. When the trial ends, you can still open and view your files. A license unlocks editing, saving, printing, and export.

• No subscription

  Yes

  A one-time purchase, with no monthly bill. See pricing. In the app, Buy a license shows your license choices.

• Bulk .pub to PDF

  Yes

  The PubKeep Converter turns a whole folder of .pub files into PDFs on the web, and your first 3 files are free.