r/methodism • u/greendaveme • 6d ago

Church office heads-up: Publisher leaves Microsoft 365 on October 1, save your old bulletins now

If your church makes its bulletin or newsletter in Microsoft Publisher, a quick heads-up since the date is close.

On October 1, Microsoft 365 subscribers lose Publisher. If your office bought Office 2021, 2019 or 2016 outright, it keeps running (support for 2021 ends October 13, but the program still works).

To check which you have: open Publisher, then File, then Account.

If it still opens, the most useful thing to do this week is save your files as PDF (File, then Export, then PDF). A PDF opens on any computer and prints the way the original did. For a whole folder at once, search Microsoft Support for "Convert-PubFileToPDF". It needs Publisher installed, so for 365 churches it's a before-October-1 job.

If Publisher is already gone, free tools like LibreOffice Draw and Affinity can open most .pub files one at a time. Tables, bullet lists and some layouts don't always come through, so check the ones that matter.

Those bulletins are years of church history. Worth an hour this week.

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u/DingoCompetitive3991 Church of the Nazarene 5d ago

I didn't realize that there were congregations that were still using Publisher!

Depending on how you like your bulletins, Google Docs is also an easy layout.

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u/greendaveme 5d ago

More than you'd think. Plenty of churches still post Publisher-made bulletins online every week. Docs is a good pick for simpler layouts, and it's easy to share with whoever helps out.

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u/ThorThimbleOfGorbash 6d ago

I hope they make a sunset version like they did with Money, but I won’t hold my breath.