Someone sent you a .pub file, or you found a folder of them, and there is no Publisher on your
computer. Publisher only ever existed for Windows, so on a Mac, an iPad, a phone or a Chromebook
it can't be opened at all, and Microsoft 365 no longer includes Publisher from October 2026.
First: is it really a Publisher file?
The .pub extension is also used for SSH public keys, small text files such as
id_rsa.pub or id_ed25519.pub that computers use to log in to servers. If the file is only a
few hundred bytes and opens in a text editor as one long line starting with ssh-, it is a key,
not a publication. The converter recognises keys and tells you, so uploading one does no harm.
Three ways to see what is inside
- As a PDF. Choose PDF and download: it opens in any browser, in Preview on a Mac and in the Files app on a phone. This is the quickest way to read and print a publication.
- As pictures. Choose JPG or PNG to get one picture per page, handy to look at on a phone or to send in a message.
- As an editable drawing. Choose ODG and open it in LibreOffice Draw, an open-source program for Windows, Mac and Linux. Text boxes, shapes and pictures can be changed and saved again.
LibreOffice Draw can also open .pub files itself, using the same Publisher import as this
converter. The converter is quicker for many files, needs nothing installed, and says what may look
different.
Which files open
Publisher 95 to Publisher 2013 files have been tested, and newer versions write the same kind of file. Files from Publisher 1.0 and 2.0, from the early 1990s, can't be read; if yours is one of them, the result says so. Fonts that are not available here are replaced, and the report lists them, so you know when a page looks different from the original.
Keeping the files
If these publications matter, convert them all while you are at it: upload a ZIP of the folders and keep the PDFs (to read and print) and the ODG versions (to edit) next to the originals.
More about what this tool reads and writes: Publisher File Converter.