About BrochureBoss

The problem

Microsoft is retiring Publisher in October 2026. Millions of flyers, bulletins, newsletters, and menus were made in it, and most of the people who made them are not designers. They’re office managers, church secretaries, and owners who learned Publisher once and got good at it. Come October, that work needs a new home.

Who is building this

I have been building software and websites since 1999, starting in the Navy and then through two decades of running my own businesses. I have watched small organizations get stranded by discontinued software more than once. It’s always the same story. The tool goes away, and someone ends up rebuilding a decade of work from scratch or paying for a subscription they can’t afford.

BrochureBoss exists so it goes better this time. What it gives you is a place to keep working, a file you keep, and no monthly bill standing between you and your own documents.

I said it wouldn’t open .pub files

For most of this year that’s exactly what this page said. Publisher’s format is undocumented and I didn’t want to promise something I couldn’t deliver, so I told people to export a PDF and rebuild by hand.

Then I built the import anyway. You pick a .pub file, it converts, and your text and pictures land in an editable document. The first real letterhead I tested it on came through with the artwork missing, which turned out to be Publisher storing the logo as a background fill rather than a picture. That’s fixed, and it’s the kind of thing you only find by running actual files through it.

It’s an approximation, not a clone, and the app tells you what it skipped every single time. I’d still rather set that expectation up front than have you find out on deadline.

Why not Canva or Adobe Express

Canva and Adobe Express are built for people who enjoy designing. BrochureBoss is built for people who just need the bulletin done by Thursday.

It’s boxes on a page, the way you already worked in Publisher: text here, a picture there, lined up to the margins. Text flows from one box to the next, page numbers live on a master page, and a mail merge runs off a spreadsheet. The things you used Publisher for.

Every project downloads as a .bboss file you keep on your own computer. After watching Publisher go away, owning the file matters.

Built by one person who has been shipping software since 1999. You get an actual answer from an actual human when you email.

Open the app Contact