Finding a Replacement for Microsoft Publisher

Finding a Replacement for Microsoft Publisher

Perhaps the hardest news I have had to face in my (admittedly tiny) digital creation sphere was the news that our tech overlords at Microsoft decided that their venerable Publisher program will no longer be supported from
October 2026
. For over a year I ignored the news and indulged in wishful thinking, denial and hope that they would change their minds. Somewhere along the line I decided that this is no way to live my life and for a while now I have been poking alternatives to Publisher so that when October arrives I will be set up on a usable alternative.
It is not easy to say goodbye, many of my library posters were cobbled together in Publisher. You can view my downloadable posters
here
. Over the years I have flirted with
Adobe Express
(back when it was still Adobe Spark), I tried Canva briefly and a few other online tools whose names escape me. None of them could take the place of Publisher, at the height of my creative prowess I could slap together a poster, flier or related thing in a matter of minutes, when I had time and inspiration I happily spent hours making eye-catching posters using a variety of tools to tweak the parts that I would put together of a Publisher page, the control I had during my creative process was total. I have colleagues and friends who swear by Canva, when I used it I eventually swore at Canva. It is a perfectly decent tool I am sure, but I do not like ceding control of functions, or having to be online to use it or the many other cloud-based tools that are now available.
If you, like me are fans of Publisher, you may be interested in trying out one, or both of these open source tools that are close to Publisher:
LibreOffice Draw
Part of the
LibreOffice
Suite of Tools developed by
The Document Foundation
, Draw is a free and open source vector graphics editor that I have found easy to transition to and use. LibreOffice is available to download and install on Linux, Windows and macOS platforms. Honestly if you are trying to get out from under the thumb of tech companies, why not start trying out LibreOffice, it won’t cost you a thing!
Download here:
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/
The Document Foundation also has an official user guide for Draw that can be downoalded or read online
here
.
Scribus
Scribus is an open source desktop publishing tool developed by The Scribus Team, who have been shepherding it’s design since 2001. It is available on a variety of platforms including Unix, Linux, BSD, macOS, Haiku, Microsoft Windows and more!
I am still kicking the tyres and getting used to how it works, but I feel that it does have potential as a Publisher replacement although I currently prefer LibreOffice Draw, but that may change as I ttes out Scribus more.
Scribus is also free to download and use. You can find official download links here:

Get Scribus

Scribus has an online
tutorial for beginners
which forms p…