Your Publisher files, still open.
Open any Microsoft Publisher .pub file on Windows, without Publisher. Read it the
way it was designed, print it, or turn it into a PDF or an editable Word document: one
leaflet, or a whole folder of them in one go.
.exe, about 63 MB.
Pick up where Publisher left off
Posters, newsletters, brochures, notices: whatever is sitting in that folder of
.pub files opens straight away, pages laid out as they were designed. Facing
pages sit side by side, the way a newsletter is meant to be read.
Why it is worth keeping
- Nothing else to install. One portable
OpenPub.exe. No Publisher, no LibreOffice, no administrator rights. - Word files that keep the layout. Each page becomes a Word page of the same size, with every text box and picture where it was, so a leaflet can carry on being updated by anyone. The files open in Word and LibreOffice.
- PDFs you can search. Pages look exactly as they do on screen, and the text can be selected, copied and read aloud.
- A whole folder in one go. Pick a folder, untick anything to leave out, and choose PDF or Word. Around 500 files take about 12 minutes to PDF and under 2 to Word, with a report saved alongside.
- Old files too. Publications from Publisher 2.0 onwards, including Russian, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic text in Publisher 95 and 97 files.
- Pictures out, in one click. Extract pictures pulls the images out of a publication.
- Up to date on its own. New versions download quietly and install when the app is closed, and only if they match the published fingerprint and carry Embermont Ltd's signature.
- Your documents stay on your computer. Nothing is uploaded anywhere to be opened or converted.
Safe to open, even a file you are unsure of
Every .pub file is read by a small, separate helper program inside a Windows
sandbox. That helper cannot open other files, use the network, start programs or touch the
registry. It hands back plain structured data, which OpenPub checks before showing anything,
so a damaged or deliberately malicious file has nothing to reach.
How to use it
The OpenPub guide walks through opening a file, reading it, saving it as PDF or Word, and converting a whole folder at once.
Latest release
Release notes are published with every version on GitHub.
Requirements
- Operating system
- Windows 10 version 1903 (May 2019) or newer, 64-bit
- Download size
- Approximately 63 MB — a single
OpenPub.exe - Installation
- Portable. Save the file and run it.
- Signed by
- Embermont Ltd
The Windows 10 1903 requirement is deliberate: OpenPub uses the text-handling library already built into Windows rather than bundling its own copy, which keeps about 31 MB out of every download. On an older version it says so plainly rather than failing in a confusing way.
Open source components
OpenPub's file reader is built on libmspub, an open-source library for reading Publisher files. The source for the components that require publication, along with full licence notices, is included with every release.
Ready when you are
Download it, open a publication, and see your files again.