Mac
How to open a .pub file on a Mac
Someone sent you a newsletter or flyer as a .pub file and your Mac shrugs. That’s normal: Microsoft never made Publisher for the Mac. You can still see the file, print it and even edit it.
Why your Mac can’t open it
A .pub file is saved in Publisher’s own format, and Publisher only ever ran on Windows. Preview, Pages, Word for Mac and Keynote don’t read that format, so double-clicking the file gets you nowhere, or offers to open it in the wrong program.
Open it as a PDF, in your browser
- Open the PubToPDF converter in your web browser.
- Drag the .pub file from Finder (or your Downloads folder, or the Mail attachment) onto the page.
- Press “Download PDF”. The PDF lands in Downloads and opens in Preview, ready to read, print or send.
The conversion runs on your Mac itself: the file is not uploaded anywhere. Up to 20 files at once are free.
Which browser? We test in Chrome and Firefox, and both work on a Mac. Safari should work too, but we haven’t finished testing it, so if Safari gives you trouble, try Chrome or Firefox.
If you want to edit it
- Word for Mac: convert to a Word file (with a one-time licence). The text boxes, pictures and tables stay in place. Your Mac may not have every Windows font the file uses. Word then swaps in another font, and text near the end of a box can run past it or be cut off, so check each page. The converter names the fonts the file needs.
- Pages: Pages can open Word files, but it may not keep floating text boxes exactly where they were. For simple documents it’s fine.
- Design apps: apps such as Affinity or Canva can import a PDF, which is a good starting point for rebuilding a flyer.
Other ways on a Mac
- LibreOffice is free for the Mac and opens .pub files in its drawing program. It’s fine for simple files but often mixes up newsletters (see our tests).
- Paid Mac apps for .pub files exist in the App Store and on the web, from about $30. They are worth a look if you need a desktop app.
- A Windows PC with an old copy of Publisher, if anyone you know still has one, can save the file as PDF.
Questions
Is there a Publisher for Mac?
No. Microsoft only ever made Publisher for Windows, and it has now been retired there too.
Do I need to install anything?
No. PubToPDF runs in the browser you already have. After the first visit it even works offline.
Does it work on an iPad?
You can pick a .pub file from the Files app and get a PDF back, but we haven’t tested iPads properly yet. Large files may be too much for an iPad’s memory.
Will the fonts be right?
In the PDF, fonts are included, using look-alikes where the original can’t be shared. The PDF looks the same on every Mac. In a Word file, the original font names are kept, so a Mac without them shows a replacement, and the text can then take more room than its box.