How to use OpenPub — CosmicForge Labs

Before you start

OpenPub is a portable program: a single file, OpenPub.exe, that runs from wherever you save it and does not need administrator rights. Save it somewhere you can find it and double-click it to run. It needs Windows 10 version 1903 (May 2019) or newer, 64-bit. The current version is on the downloads page.

The first time you run it, Windows may show a prompt. From version 1.1.0 OpenPub is signed, and Windows shows Embermont Ltd as the publisher. Earlier versions were not signed.

Open a file

Choose Open file and pick a .pub file. You can also drag the file onto the OpenPub window.
To open files by double-clicking them, right-click a .pub file, choose Open with, and choose OpenPub.

The OpenPub window: a toolbar across the top, a folder list on the left, the page in the middle and page thumbnails on the right — The OpenPub window. The toolbar across the top holds Open file, Browse folder, Print, Save as, Extract pictures and Convert all. The folder is listed on the left, the pages on the right, and a notice bar runs along the bottom.

Read it

Pages are shown as they were designed, with a thumbnail of each down the right-hand side.
Zoom with Ctrl and the mouse wheel, or Ctrl with plus and minus. Fit width sizes the page to the window.
Publications designed as facing pages open side by side, as they were drawn. The button beside the page number switches this on and off. (Version 1.1.0 onwards.)

Look through a folder

Browse folder lists a folder and its subfolders beside the page, so the other publications in it are one click away. Nothing is converted unless you ask for it. Change picks a different folder.

Print, or save as PDF or Word

Print: Each page is fitted to the printer's paper.
Save as, then PDF: The pages exactly as shown, at 300 dpi. The text can be searched, selected and copied (version 1.2.3 onwards).
Save as, then Word: An editable Word document that keeps the layout. Each page becomes a Word page of the same size, and each text box and picture stays where it was.

Choose PDF for something to keep, send or print. Choose Word for something you will need to change again. If you are not sure, save both.

In a Word file the text, pictures and tables are real Word content that you can edit. The coloured panels and rules the page is built from are one picture per page behind the text, so they can be moved or deleted as a whole but not edited.

The Word files open in Word and LibreOffice. They do not open properly in Apache OpenOffice, which shows the pictures but none of the text. If you use OpenOffice, save as PDF instead.

Convert a whole folder

Choose Convert all, or drop a folder onto the OpenPub window.
OpenPub shows the folder's full path and lists everything it will convert, with a tick beside each folder and file.
Clear a tick to leave a file out. Clear a folder's tick to leave out everything inside it. Subfolders are included unless you say otherwise.
Choose PDF or Word, and where to save the results.

The conversion runs in the background, so OpenPub stays usable. It can be stopped and started again without redoing the files that are finished. A report of what happened is written alongside the converted files. As a guide, 500 files take about 12 minutes to PDF and under 2 minutes to Word.

The notice bar

The bar at the bottom of the window says plainly what may look different from Publisher: fonts that are missing, clip art that cannot be shown yet, and anything that could not be read. Missing fonts are replaced by similar ones, and a heading that no longer fits is shrunk slightly to fit.

What may look different

Clip art that Windows cannot draw appears as a grey placeholder. It is still kept in Word files.
Text wrapping around pictures is approximate. Text flows around a picture's rectangle rather than its outline.
Hidden text is not exported. If more text was typed into a box than fits, Publisher only ever showed what fits, and so do OpenPub's pages, PDFs and Word files.
Multi-column text boxes, WordArt and special effects are simplified.

None of this is a reason to delete the originals. Keep the .pub files after you have converted them.

If a file will not open

If a file is damaged or cannot be read, OpenPub says so in plain English rather than failing quietly.

Updates and help

OpenPub downloads new versions quietly and installs them when you close it. The bottom of the window says whether it is up to date, has an update ready, or could not check. Click an update that is ready to install it straight away.

The ? window lists what is new and the known issues, so you can tell a fault from something that is simply not built yet. It also holds the terms OpenPub is provided under.

Downloads About OpenPub