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Microsoft Publisher isn’t available for Mac (although there are many great alternatives) but it’s easy to open and edit Publisher files on Mac.
Here we show you 5 free and simple ways to open and edit an MS Publisher .PUB file on a Mac.
1. Export From Publisher PUB Format Into Another Format
Although it’s not an option for everyone, if you can contact the sender of the Publisher file (or know someone who has access to a PC with Microsoft Publisher installed), by far the easiest thing to do is export the file from Publisher in another format. To do this, you simply ask the sender or someone with Windows to open the file in Publisher and then export it to a different format that can be opened on Mac. They must then go to File – Export – Change File Type in Publisher and select any of the Export options such as “Create PDF/XPS Document”, “Publish HTML” (to view it as a web page) or “Change File Type”. You can also choose to export the file to a format that a Commercial Printer can read.
2. Convert Publisher Files Online Into Another Format
If you can’t contact the sender or simply don’t have access to Microsoft Publisher at all, an alternative option is to convert the PUB file for free online to another format such as Word or PDF. You can then edit this file using another application such as Microsoft Word or one of the many excellent alternatives to Word on Mac. To convert a Publisher file, there are many online file conversion services that will convert files for you instantly without having to download anything.
Here’s how to use online file converter Zamzar to convert a Publisher file to another format:
- Go to Zamzar. Click “Choose Files…” and upload the file you want to convert.
- Choose a format to convert it to (such as DOCX, PDF, PNG etc).
- Enter an email address to receive the converted file.
- Click “Convert”.
Within a few seconds, you should receive the converted file. If Zamzar doesn’t work for any reason, or you just want to convert to PDF, there are many other free conversion services such as online2pdf.com which converts documents to PDF online.
Or you can also use PDFConvertOnline which converts directly from .PUB to PDF:Note that a disadvantage of converting Publisher files this way is that it doesn’t always preserve the original formatting of the document. You may find that images, tables and other elements do not appear properly in which case, you should try to use one of the other methods instead.
3. Open Publisher Files In LibreOffice
LibreOffice is a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office for Mac and is based on the popular free Office suite OpenOffice. As of version 4.0, LibreOffice is the only program to both open and edit Microsoft Publisher files for free although you can’t export to Publisher format. Like Microsoft Office, LibreOffice consists of different apps but you can edit MS Publisher files on Mac using LibreOffice Draw which is LibreOffice’s graphical design and desktop publishing app. As you can see from the example Publisher file imported into LibreOffice below, the interface isn’t as user-friendly or as slick as Publisher but it does work. The formatting may also not be perfectly preserved but can usually be fixed with some manual adjustments.
Note that you can’t export files from LibreOffice in .PUB format – you can only save them in LibreDraw’s ODF format. You can watch how easy it is to open a Publisher file on Mac with LibreOffice below.
4. Open Publisher Files In Office 2011 For Mac
Although many Mac users are now using Microsoft Office 2016, if you’re still using Office 2011 you’re in luck. One little known feature of Microsoft Word 2011 is that it can emulate the layout of a Microsoft Publisher document. You will need to convert the Publisher file first to RTF format using one of the online file converters covered in Option 2, but this workaround turns Word 2011 for Mac into a basic DTP software and is probably the closest thing you’ll get to Publisher on Mac. Just go to View and then Publishing Layout View to see a Microsoft Publisher style layout of the document.
Unfortunately, this method does not work in Office 2016 for Mac as Microsoft has removed the Publishing Layout View in Word 2016 For Mac.
5. Install Windows To Run Publisher On Mac
If all else fails, or if you regularly need to open Microsoft Publisher files on your Mac, you should consider installing Windows on your Mac which will allow you to install Microsoft Publisher on Mac. You can now install Windows 10 on Mac for free and although it’s the most time-consuming (and hard drive consuming) solution, it does allow you to run any Windows application on your Mac.
If you have any problems opening Publisher files on your Mac or with any of the solutions suggested here, let us know in the comments below.
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A lot of people ask me whether it is possible to get Microsoft publisher for the Macintosh computer, or whether there is an equivalent piece of software. Unfortunately the answer is no, there has never been a Macintosh version of publisher, and this article tries to explain why, and what the options are.
Microsoft Publisher is a very popular piece of software for Windows computers. It fills of a gap on Windows computers because Microsoft Office does not have the capability to do page layout like Apple Pages does. As you think about more alternatives to Microsoft publisher for a window computer, Adobe PageMaker and InDesign are too expensive and complex for most everyday users. So when people want to do a simple newsletter, but one that’s too complicated for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher fills the gap nicely. Microsoft Word documents tend to look pretty bland whereas publisher allows you to spruce them up a bit.
Microsoft publisher fills a gap on Windows computers that does not exist in OSX
Now let’s think about the Macintosh computer, there is no such gap. Apple Pages can do pretty much everything Publisher can do! So a Macintosh user has no need for Microsoft Publisher. Apple Pages can produce some quite spectacular documents very simply, and unless you are a professional publisher there’s really not the need to step up to PageMaker or InDesign. This does not really leave a market for Microsoft Publisher on the Macintosh computer, except for Macintosh users to be able to read a publisher document that was created on a PC! So while this would be a nice convenience for Macintosh users, I don’t imagine it is a large market for Microsoft Publisher.
Microsoft Word is a different story though. Microsoft Word was first released for Apple Computer back in 1984. Microsoft Word is a professional word-processing application that in many ways is superior to Apple pages, and was superior to Apple works and Claris Works. If you are writing large or complex documents there is and always has been a huge market for Microsoft Word on the Apple Computer.
If you are waiting for a version of Microsoft Publisher to appear for Macintosh computer, I would not be holding your breath.
If you want to access a Microsoft publisher document there are a couple of options.
The first one is to use Libre Office. Libre Office
The other option is to use one of these solutions I have described in this article. This will give you a PDF version of the Microsoft Publisher document that retains all its original formatting. You can’t really do anything with the PDF version unless you own Adobe Pagemaker, but you will be able to accurately view and print the Microsoft publisher document.
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How to match the colours on your monitor to your printer.Gary Waresays:August 28, 2018 at 1:04 am Publisher For Macbook Pro
Finally used boot camp to set up windows partition on MacBook to pretty much purely run Publisher.
Couldn’t believe I didn’t do it years ago.
Can move between one or the other in under a minute or so.
It’s more a utility of neither Publisher or Pages being able to be used on the other operating system that has been the issue for us. Our office runs windows, I use Mac.
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ReplyWaynesays:August 30, 2018 at 4:43 pmThanks Gary – that’s a good solution if you are caught needing to use both.
ReplyKensays:April 4, 2019 at 7:17 pm
I’m sorry but I use Pages almost daily, and there is no comparison to what Publisher can do. I run bootcamp like Gary because I can never get documents that consistently look as good as they do on Publisher.
ReplyKeithsays:May 6, 2019 at 2:16 pmI have similar issues trying to open .pub files on LibreOffice. Supposedly you can simply open those files in that particular office suite, but it won’t populate the graphics. That just makes the whole process senseless without them. Anyone have an idea?