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Affinty Publisher to read M$ Publisher files


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It seems that (a decade or two late)  MS are going to kill of MS Publisher by October 2026. 

The problem I have is a LOT of small clubs and societies using "borrowed" corporate MS Office licences are using MS Publisher.  To wean them off MS and onto Affinity, what would be very helpful is the ability for Affinity Publisher to read (but not save)  MS Publisher files.

It would REALLY help with converting some of these people off MS Pub and make my life a LOT easier.

 

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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I personally think Affinity Publisher is far too complicated for most people who used MS Publisher. I think the simpler conversion is to Canva itself. It has the templates and is super easy to use. Affinity Publisher is complex and powerful as a page layout app should be. I definitely feel your pain, I dreaded when anyone sent in a MS Publisher file for print.

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LibreOffice will open MS Publisher files, from a conversation in another topic.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.6.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1

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13 minutes ago, wonderings said:

I personally think Affinity Publisher is far too complicated for most people who used MS Publisher. I think the simpler conversion is to Canva itself

NO!!!! Canva is a step backwards!!!! For the people I am working with, I can set them up with the group templates. That has already been done, we have Affinity, but some of them have Publisher and cant see any reason to move.  Though to be fair they were doing very little with MS pub anyway.  We are now trying to move things forward with new graphics and templates.  

The thing is a lot of small clubs, societies,   and companies used MS Publisher and will have a whole load of historical documents that they would want to open with A-Pub and save in the new format.     I learnt Affinity in my 60s so I am sure others can.

 

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

LibreOffice will open MS Publisher files, from a conversation in another topic.

We don't want them anywhere near LbireOffice.  It is a step backwards.

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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But, realistically, there's little chance that Affinity will add support for a dead-end application like MS Publisher, when they didn't even provide it for their earlier Serif products.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.6.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1

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3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But, realistically, there's little chance that Affinity will add support for a dead-end application like MS Publisher, when they didn't even provide it for their earlier Serif products.

True, but I thought I would ask as there will be a large number of M$ Publisher users looking for a new home and there will be a vast number of historic M$ Publisher files Affinity users will want to open.  

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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3 minutes ago, Chills said:

there will be a large number of M$ Publisher users looking for a new home and there will be a vast number of historic M$ Publisher files Affinity users will want to open

The same is true of Serif PagePlus, and Serif hasn’t even seen fit to provide a way of importing formatted text saved from the WritePlus story editor within PagePlus.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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23 minutes ago, Chills said:

NO!!!! Canva is a step backwards!!!! For the people I am working with, I can set them up with the group templates. That has already been done, we have Affinity, but some of them have Publisher and cant see any reason to move.  Though to be fair they were doing very little with MS pub anyway.  We are now trying to move things forward with new graphics and templates.  

The thing is a lot of small clubs, societies,   and companies used MS Publisher and will have a whole load of historical documents that they would want to open with A-Pub and save in the new format.     I learnt Affinity in my 60s so I am sure others can.

 

Both are bad, but Canva at least can look nicer and has modern updated templates for someone to use.  There are free online MS Publisher to PDF convertors so people can do that if they really want an old MS Publisher file. 

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17 minutes ago, Alfred said:

The same is true of Serif PagePlus, and Serif hasn’t even seen fit to provide a way of importing formatted text saved from the WritePlus story editor within PagePlus.

That was the past. This is now.  Things change

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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12 minutes ago, wonderings said:

There are free online MS Publisher to PDF convertors so people can do that if they really want an old MS Publisher file. 

That would be helpful to know... I couldn't find any.
However, it must mean some one is looking to convert M$Pub to something else, so there must be a market.

 

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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1 minute ago, Chills said:

That would be helpful to know... I couldn't find any.
However, it must mean some one is looking to convert M$Pub to something else, so there must be a market.

 

There are free conversion sites for just about everything. 

https://www.publishertopdf.com

 

If there was a market for MS Publisher I am sure Microsoft would still be selling it.

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9 minutes ago, wonderings said:

f there was a market for MS Publisher I am sure Microsoft would still be selling it.

Agreed but there will be a VAST number of old MS Pub documents that people will want to open and work on/update etc.  

There are a lot of small organizations using borrowed cooperate licences who in the future will need a new tool.

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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1 hour ago, Alfred said:

Serif hasn’t even seen fit to provide a way of importing formatted text saved from the WritePlus story editor

 

51 minutes ago, Chills said:

That was the past. This is now.  Things change


Exactly the same can be said of M$ Pub. ;)

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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