A lot of people ask me whether it is possible to get Microsoft publisher for the Macintosh computer, or whether there is an equivalent piece of software. Unfortunately the answer is no, there has never been a Macintosh version of publisher, and this article tries to explain why, and what the options are.
Microsoft Publisher is a very popular piece of software for Windows computers. It fills of a gap on Windows computers because Microsoft Office does not have the capability to do page layout like Apple Pages does. As you think about more alternatives to Microsoft publisher for a window computer, Adobe PageMaker and InDesign are too expensive and complex for most everyday users. So when people want to do a simple newsletter, but one that’s too complicated for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher fills the gap nicely. Microsoft Word documents tend to look pretty bland whereas publisher allows you to spruce them up a bit.
May 05, 2009 Publisher on Mac Nope. The simple reason being that Microsoft did not write a program for Mac for Publisher. If someone sends you a Publisher file, you cannot open it on a Mac. They sure could send it as a PDF, and you can view the file, but the catch is if someone sends the file and wants to share it for editing, etc., no go. May 03, 2017 LibreOffice (which is difference than ProjectLibre), free to download and use, can open Microsoft Publisher files. Another option to consider is using a Windows virtual machine on your iMac - Fusion, Parallels, and so on. Microsoft publisher has been around for a long time but it has never been able to run on Apple computers. If you’re like me you probably have friends who have Microsoft publisher files they occasionally email you. Sadly there is no way to open a Microsoft publisher file on a Mac, until now.
Microsoft publisher fills a gap on Windows computers that does not exist in OSX
Now let’s think about the Macintosh computer, there is no such gap. Apple Pages can do pretty much everything Publisher can do! So a Macintosh user has no need for Microsoft Publisher. Apple Pages can produce some quite spectacular documents very simply, and unless you are a professional publisher there’s really not the need to step up to PageMaker or InDesign. This does not really leave a market for Microsoft Publisher on the Macintosh computer, except for Macintosh users to be able to read a publisher document that was created on a PC! So while this would be a nice convenience for Macintosh users, I don’t imagine it is a large market for Microsoft Publisher.
Microsoft Word is a different story though. Microsoft Word was first released for Apple Computer back in 1984. Microsoft Word is a professional word-processing application that in many ways is superior to Apple pages, and was superior to Apple works and Claris Works. If you are writing large or complex documents there is and always has been a huge market for Microsoft Word on the Apple Computer.
If you are waiting for a version of Microsoft Publisher to appear for Macintosh computer, I would not be holding your breath.
If you want to access a Microsoft publisher document there are a couple of options.
The first one is to use Libre Office. Libre Office
The other option is to use one of these solutions I have described in this article. This will give you a PDF version of the Microsoft Publisher document that retains all its original formatting. You can’t really do anything with the PDF version unless you own Adobe Pagemaker, but you will be able to accurately view and print the Microsoft publisher document.
Finally used boot camp to set up windows partition on MacBook to pretty much purely run Publisher.
Couldn’t believe I didn’t do it years ago.
Can move between one or the other in under a minute or so.
It’s more a utility of neither Publisher or Pages being able to be used on the other operating system that has been the issue for us. Our office runs windows, I use Mac.
Thanks Gary – that’s a good solution if you are caught needing to use both.
ReplyKensays:April 4, 2019 at 7:17 pmI’m sorry but I use Pages almost daily, and there is no comparison to what Publisher can do. I run bootcamp like Gary because I can never get documents that consistently look as good as they do on Publisher.
ReplyKeithsays:May 6, 2019 at 2:16 pmI have similar issues trying to open .pub files on LibreOffice. Supposedly you can simply open those files in that particular office suite, but it won’t populate the graphics. That just makes the whole process senseless without them. Anyone have an idea?
ReplyWhen switching from Office for Windows to Office for Mac, you’ll discover that you can’t open Microsoft Publisher files in Office 2011 for Mac. You need to convert your Publisher files to Word (.docx) format by using Microsoft Office on a PC. After that, you can move those Word files to Office for Mac.
When you open the Word file from Windows on your Mac, the result won’t be perfect. You have to recreate the links between the text boxes, and the layout may need tweaking, but this is the best way to migrate Publisher files.
To convert a Publisher document to Word in Office 2010 on Windows, do the following:
To reinstall the font, see.The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Font box when you highlight text microsoft word mac full.
Open the document you want to convert using Microsoft Publisher 2010 for Windows.
Press Ctrl-A to select all the content.
Press Ctrl-C to copy all the content to the Windows Clipboard.
Open a new, blank Microsoft Word 2010 document.
Press Ctrl-V to paste the Clipboard contents into Word.
Click the Save button on the Quick Access Toolbar.
The resulting Word (.docx) file can now be moved to your Mac.
If you’re moving other types of files from Office for Windows to Office 2011 for Mac, you shouldn’t experience many hiccups. Because the file formats for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are identical on both Macs and PCs, no file conversions are needed. After you copy your files from your PC and move them to your Mac, you can — with very few exceptions — simply open your documents and templates in Office 2011.
Files that contain properly written add-ins and macros should also work. Macros and add-ins that use Windows platform-specific code don’t work, but you usually can modify them to work in Office 2011.