My cousin sent me a party invitation as an email attachment, but my Mac won’t open it. The file is named invite.pub. I already called her and got the relevant details, but in case this happens again, do you know any Mac apps that can read a PUB file? I already tried Word 2008 and Preview.
Microsoft Publisher is included with high-end versions of Office for Windows, but there’s no equivalent app on the Mac side. If your cousin plans a lot of parties, she might want to export her Publisher-created invites as PDF files or HTML instead. Either of those formats can be emailed to PC and Mac users without problems.
But if you’re too sweet to trouble her, you can do the PDF conversion yourself. Fire up your Web browser and head to pdfonline.com/convert-pdf. Follow the instructions to browse your Mac for the PUB file (up to 2MB in size), choose a name for your converted PDF file, and supply your email address. Then click the Convert To PDF button, and the site will make your new PDF file and email it to you when it’s ready, for free. Ours came quickly, about 1 minute later.
PDFOnline.com can convert several file types to PDF, including PUB, PPT, PPS, and more.
Lora Baines
November 05, 2012 at 1:04pm
tedbragg that is a hilarious story! MS Publisher is indeed a steaming pile of software excrement. Our shop cringes whenever a client uploads a file that was created in that sorry excuse of a design program. Microsoft clearly has no business in the print industry.
tedbragg
October 05, 2009 at 7:02pm
Hoo boy. Do I REMEMBER MS Publisher...
Working in the print industry, the number one target for typesetters' and designers' venom was MS Publisher. This app was simply horrible, unless of course you're the unsuspecting secretary who prints stuff at their desk. Gotta send it to a printshop? Forget it. Export to PDF? It MIGHT work, but don't bet on it.
When MS was giving this piece of #$*% away for free to anybody, they tried to foist it on printshops, too. We actually TRIED to work with it. Unless your system was a 100% match to the client's, Pub files would open up wildly deformed. Heaven forbid you didn't have the same fonts.
We ate more film and plates fussing with Pub.
We took all 5 boxes MS sent to us, melted the discs and keepcases and sent the smoldering pile in a box (complete with scorch marks) back to Redmond. Inside was a letter with the most nasty, deranged and ugly words we could fathom and put into the most offensive sentences known to man.
Pointless, but fun. That was also the day we ceremoniously dropped our remaining Windows PC out the 3rd story window and into the parking lot.
