Publisher - Have you retired it?

[DavR]

So, how many people upgraded their MS Office over the holidays?

 

And how many emails have you had so far asking where Publisher has gone, despite a two year information campaign about it's retirement?

 

Just had the first this morning, Day 1, 8.30am 😂 

[jhothersall]

I do think Publisher should have a EOL notice when opening Publisher files.

 

I have been tell staff about this for years ... and when its gone no doubt staff will be in touch !!! 😅

[JRA]

Started binning that off a year and a half ago and I'm still sad. :(

[DalekSec]

I'm a Mac user, whats Publisher? (joking)

 

Ditched it off moment i started at this company (4 years), you can always run a search for .pub files to find current heavy users and inform them. 

[Fazza]

We put it in Trust Wide newsletter multiple times over the last 18 months and removed it from our builds so any computer getting a rebuild since would not have it installed.  We quoted what Microsoft said about it and told them to save any important Publisher files as PDFs.

To date, we have only had a handful of people querying it and we have put LibreOffice as an install option in our SCCM/MECM Software Centre else they can give PowerPoint a go for future documents.

[DavR]

Second email of the day. This one at least knew Publisher had gone and was looking for a file converter..... 

[3s-gtech]

I think it’s just me left with it (2024 pushed it via GPO and targeted at 2021 machines).

I’ll keep it until the deadline because I still get users angry that it’s going (another today!)

Not my fault it’s being retired, nor my problem!

[Sylv3r]

I think it's still there for us, but there was a ticket from one user this morning asking if Publisher was going with this image that appeared when opening Publisher - clearly missed the memo's we've been sending for at least 18 months !

[Fazza]

The major issue that is staring us all in the face is that once it's gone, it's gone and there's nothing that opens up a .pub file 100% (trust me, I've tried) they always come out a bit funny.  You'd think Microsoft would write a reader for .pub files that has one button that says 'Save as PDF' rather then just prevent hundreds, thousands (maybe millions) of Publisher files on all the computers in the world from ceasing to be of any use.

[6Foot2]

1 hour ago, Fazza said:

The major issue that is staring us all in the face is that once it's gone, it's gone and there's nothing that opens up a .pub file 100% (trust me, I've tried) they always come out a bit funny.  You'd think Microsoft would write a reader for .pub files that has one button that says 'Save as PDF' rather then just prevent hundreds, thousands (maybe millions) of Publisher files on all the computers in the world from ceasing to be of any use.

 

Write a script to preemptively hunt out publisher files on the network and save them to another format?

 

😃

[altecsole]

49 minutes ago, 6Foot2 said:

 

Write a script to preemptively hunt out publisher files on the network and save them to another format?

 

😃

Try this - https://mediumseagreen-seal-177480.hostingersite.com/

[Fazza]

1 hour ago, altecsole said:

Try this - https://mediumseagreen-seal-177480.hostingersite.com/

Ooh! That looks interesting.  I no longer have Publisher on my PC though as I re-imaged it a few months back so it's gone forever on my PC 😢

 

I was hoping something like this would come along as I have an air-gapped VM with just Publisher installed on it for exactly this sort of thing so I will give it a go..

[Fazza]

2 hours ago, altecsole said:

Try this - https://mediumseagreen-seal-177480.hostingersite.com/

 

I have an air-gapped VM with just publisher on and sadly the scripts (batch file and PowerShell) do not work and there's no log file to tell me why!

 

[altecsole]

11 minutes ago, Fazza said:

I have an air-gapped VM with just publisher on and sadly the scripts (batch file and PowerShell) do not work and there's no log file to tell me why!

It's not my script, just one I came across that I thought might be useful at some point. Maybe put some Publisher files in a folder, and then specify the folder, rather than choosing the whole of the c:\ drive?

[Fazza]

Microsoft have their own script so I have downloaded that from Microsoft and using that one instead 😎

[DavR]

I've been giving out this online convertor - https://online2pdf.com/convert-publisher-to-pdf - with the proviso that it's not to be used for anything confidential / personal data. Shouldn't be an issue as most of the files are signs or labels and suchlike.

 

Seems to be working OK.