Microsoft Discontinuing Publisher. Alternatives? | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Discontinuing Publisher. Alternatives?

17 pointssupliminal18 comments

Got this in the email not too long ago:

Beginning 1 October 2026, Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported as part of Microsoft 365. Many common Publisher scenarios are available in other Microsoft 365 apps, including Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.

Action Recommended: Before 1 October 2026, convert your existing Publisher files to PDF or Word format. After this date, you will no longer be able to open or edit these files with Microsoft Publisher.

This company is wild.

Where do we go from here? Affinity? InDesign? Quark? Scribus?

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A friend of mine used this as motivation for switching to a used MacBook Air M1 (today he’d probably buy a Neo) - and started using Pages to write his papers s. He watched a bunch of YouTube videos and asked a lot of questions in Google every time he got stuck. A week later he’s a happy camper.

Pages takes me back as I really enjoyed all the Apple-first products (remember Sofa and Cultured Code?) but nowadays I can’t justify getting into macOS.

Since Canva bought Affinity, I’m uncertain of the future. Maybe Canva will stay true to their word, but it seems questionable based on every other company that’s made similar claims.

I actually forgot this happened until I saw Affinity Publisher was discontinued. This reminds me I need to convert my Affinity docs and migrate as well.

It’s one thing if it was just me, I can get by with duct tape and glue and building shrines to Stallman, but I have to think about the not-so technical folks I hand things off to.

This is partly why I am exploring Scribus, as even if it’s not worked on actively it’s much less likely to just abruptly stop one day, and highly likely its successor software will have a tool to convert things over.

I looked at more competent alternatives to Scribus for Linux and I must say VivaDesigner[1] looks pretty awesome. It's 149 € for the buy-once version. But I believe you have to pay for upgrades...

[1] https://viva.systems/designer/

Canva's operated on a freemium model for years with their own main product, and they have a lot of stuff on the Canva side they can implement into Affinity as a value add. Very little reason to expect that they'd renege on their commitments. The only real risk for that is the upcoming IPO and becoming publicly traded, IMO. The current ownership seems committed enough.

LibreOffice Draw is quite capable. Though for some better formatting (linked text boxes) you might have to use Writer, which is still good abut a bit more klunky as you are fighting the formatting of the writer document layer if you want varied text boxes....

Thus far I have had pleasant experience with LibreOffice. Shockingly pleasant and easy to use and fast. I moved most of my MS Office printable media to it. I had to chase down different font weights to capture as close to the thickness that Word/Excel + print drivers would output, but the Libre output is to my eyes a lot better in almost every case, so that’s a win I’ll take.

Decades ago I was using OpenOffice but it had a long way to go back then, so I stuck with MS Office all these years.

I’m sure I’ll come across something that doesn’t quite work right but it’s unlikely I’ll encounter an Excel application built on macros in the wild anymore. (famous last words)

n.b. I have no idea what the hell is up with Microsoft over the last year. I feel like HN could use a thread where people just share horror stories. I’ve heard about the CoPilot nonsense, the cramming of AI into everything, but I stuck to Windows 10 to avoid as much of it as possible, although now it’s EOL. That they’re just shitting on everything solid they’ve done over the years does not make any sense to me.

What about using a supported version of Publisher (standalone) on Windows in a VM?

I thought about doing this, combining it with Win 10 Enterprise IOT, but in the end it’s delaying the inevitable. I’m migrating away from Microsoft Office and Windows in general because Linux is an easy sell when most activity is done through a browser anyway.

I think Scribus is a suitable replacement for Publisher? I don’t think it’s any worse but I don’t think it’s at the level where it can compete against InDesign and Quark. However the major upside is that it is open source and runs on Linux just fine.

If you need to make brochures, flyers, or other layout-heavy stuff, Affinity Publisher is probably the easiest alternative.

No sense in not trying out Affinity, I think.

Notepad ?

Inkscape

Will definitely give this another go.

Inkscape is generally great but doesn’t handle text very well.

Canva?

Anything But M$

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