For churches and parishes
Your bulletins and newsletters, without Publisher
Many parishes made their weekly bulletin, newsletter, service sheets and rotas in Publisher for years. Now that Publisher is gone, PubToPDF opens those files on whatever computer your office or volunteers have.
What it’s good for
- This week’s bulletin: turn the .pub into a PDF to print, e-mail or put on the website, even if the computer it was made on is gone.
- Next week’s bulletin: convert last week’s to Word and change the dates, readings and notices, instead of rebuilding the layout from scratch.
- The archive: convert a whole folder of past newsletters to PDF in one go. The folders by year stay as they were, and a spreadsheet lists every file and anything worth checking.
- Files from someone else: the previous secretary’s USB stick, a diocesan template, a printer’s proof. They open on Windows, Mac or Chromebook.
Built for this kind of file
Church bulletins and newsletters are some of the hardest .pub files: columns, stories that continue on another page, text wrapped around photos, tables of service times, clip art and WordArt headings. Many converters repeat or lose parts of them. Two of the fifteen files in our public test are a parish newsletter and a church bulletin, and on both our pages match Publisher’s own PDF clearly better than LibreOffice’s (about 90 out of 100, against about 80).
Names and addresses stay in the office. Prayer lists, rotas and contact details are personal information. PubToPDF converts files inside the browser, so they are never uploaded to us or anyone else.
One licence for the whole parish
PDF conversion is free. The Organisation licence (€69 / $69, paid once, no subscription) covers all staff and volunteers of one church or parish: whole folders at once and editable Word files. You get a receipt from our payment provider for your accounts. A Personal licence (€19 / $19 once) suits a single volunteer.
Moving to Canva or Word?
Many churches are moving their bulletins to Canva or Word. Converting your old files first gives you something to work from: a PDF you can import into Canva as a starting point, or a Word file you can keep using as next year’s template.
Questions
Our bulletin is a folded booklet. Will the pages come out right?
The pages come out at the size and in the order they were made in Publisher. Booklet printing (putting pages side by side in printing order) is something your printer or printer settings do, as before.
Can several volunteers use one licence?
Yes, with the Organisation licence. It covers all staff and volunteers of one church or parish. Each person enters the key once in their own browser.
We have hundreds of old newsletters. Is that too many?
No. With a licence, choose the whole folder and let it run. Each file takes a second or two, and the ZIP you download keeps the folder structure. Free use is limited to 20 files at a time.
Some of our files are 20 years old. Will they open?
Files from Publisher 2002 onwards work best. Older ones usually open, but some styles and pictures may be missing, and a few won’t open at all. The report tells you which ones to look at.
Is this connected to Microsoft?
No. PubToPDF is independent and not affiliated with Microsoft. It simply reads the files Publisher made.