Guide

A Microsoft Publisher alternative that opens your .pub files

Publisher was the program office managers, church secretaries and small business owners learned once and got good at. BrochureBoss works the same way: boxes on a page, text that flows from one box to the next, and a print-ready PDF at the end.

Try a sample, no account Open BrochureBoss

Free during the beta. A free account is needed to import your own files. Dates from Microsoft.

What carries over from Publisher

  • Your old .pub files, imported as editable layouts
  • Text boxes that link and flow across pages
  • Mail merge from a spreadsheet for labels, letters and postcards
  • Master pages for letterhead, footers and page numbers
  • Tables for price lists, schedules and menus
  • Twelve starting templates, from a tri-fold brochure to mailing labels
  • Print-quality PDF with bleed and crop marks for the print shop

What it doesn’t do yet

No WordArt, no CMYK separations (print shops convert on their end), tables don’t flow across linked boxes, and mail merge tops out at 500 records per run. The desktop app is planned for early 2027. The full list is on the features page.

Straight talk: the import is an editable approximation, not a pixel-perfect copy. Text, pictures, colors and positions come across well. WordArt, some spacing and vector clip art don’t, fonts you don’t have are swapped for close matches, and the app lists everything it skipped.

Other options, plainly

If you still own a boxed copy of Publisher, it keeps running without updates. Microsoft’s own suggestion is to save each file as a PDF, which is good for printing but not for editing. LibreOffice Draw, which is free, can also open many .pub files. BrochureBoss is for people who want to keep editing and reusing the work in something that feels like Publisher.

Questions

  • Is BrochureBoss free?

    The browser version is free during the beta. A free version will stay free after the desktop app arrives; a paid option is planned for priority support and commercial-use extras.

  • Does it work like Publisher?

    That’s the point. You place boxes on a page, type into them, link text from box to box, and print. No design background needed.

  • Can I bring my old Publisher files?

    Yes. Import your .pub files and they open as editable layouts. The app lists anything it couldn’t bring across.

  • Who makes BrochureBoss?

    Pat Albert and the Palm Desert Geeks team in Palm Desert, California. Call (760) 278-9676 or email info@brochureboss.com.