We’ve heard a lot of stories lately from people in BGAV churches who are concerned because one of their favorites—Microsoft Publisher—is going away. It’s being retired completely.

Many of you say you use Publisher for church bulletins, newsletters, and your less frequent publishing needs. And if you’ve been using those previous documents as templates for ongoing work, you won’t want to lose them.

So if you use Publisher and haven’t already heard this news anywhere, you need to be aware: you must save any documents you want to keep as PDFs before the platform disappears in October 2026. As of the time of this writing, Microsoft hasn’t specified a firm date in October, so you should take action before October 1.

By saving your documents as PDFs, you can then convert those to Microsoft Word—so you will at least have them available as editable text you can move to a different platform of your choice. Some will allow uploading PDFs directly as well.  

Suggested Alternatives

We found an excellent article in PCMag that lists several potential alternatives to Publisher, though each has its own challenges. Read the article from PCMag.

While you can use Word or PowerPoint tools to accomplish some very simple publications, those will likely frustrate you and be cumbersome. We think most of our readers will want to explore using Canva or Scribus.  

Canva: free version available, much better paid version available free to nonprofits (if your church is a registered nonprofit, you can get a free account following their guidelines) - www.canva.com

Scribus: free and open sourced, but has steeper learning curve - www.sourceforge.net/projects/scribus

If you’ve already explored your options and found something that works for you and your church, please let us know! Email us and we’ll share your advice with other churches.

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