Bulletin Rescue Free file check

Publisher is going away. A plan for the Episcopal parish office.

For parish administrators with years of service leaflets, parish newsletters and Holy Week booklets saved as .pub files.

The dates

Oct 1
2026

If you pay for Microsoft 365, you lose access to Publisher on October 1, 2026.

Oct 13
2026

If you bought Publisher 2021 (or Office 2021) outright, it keeps running, but support ends October 13, 2026.

Service leaflets are the hard ones

Many Episcopal parishes print much of the service in the leaflet: the collect of the day, the readings from the Revised Common Lectionary (in use across the Episcopal Church since 2010), the Prayers of the People in one of the six forms in the Book of Common Prayer (pages 383 to 395) or a form written in the parish, and hymn numbers from The Hymnal 1982.

That makes leaflets long and full of text, often laid out as one stream of text flowing through linked boxes from page to page. That's exactly the kind of Publisher file that free converters handle worst. LibreOffice, for example, opens most .pub files but can jumble text that flows across linked boxes.

So the order matters: save your leaflets as PDF while Publisher still opens. Don't count on converting them cleanly later.

Which leaflets to rescue first

  1. Your regular Sunday templates. If the 8:00 service is Rite I and the 10:30 is Rite II, that's two templates, not one.
  2. Holy Week. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Great Vigil of Easter are the longest leaflets you make, and you only make them once a year.
  3. Christmas Eve, Lessons and Carols, and All Saints.
  4. Burial and marriage leaflets. Families ask for copies years later.
  5. The parish newsletter and the annual meeting report.
  6. The back archive, all at once.

How to save them

Open Publisher and look at File, then Account. "Microsoft 365" means Publisher stops on October 1. "Office 2021," "2019" or "2016" means it keeps working for now, but that one computer may be the only thing in the parish that opens these files.

While it opens, save each leaflet as a PDF (File, then Export, then PDF) and keep the .pub file next to it. Microsoft's free bulk script converts a whole folder, but only on a computer with a working, licensed Publisher. After that, our free guide covers LibreOffice and the other options.

Making next Sunday's leaflet

Most offices are moving to Canva for covers, inserts and newsletters, and it's good at those. Be honest about the long leaflets, though. Canva has no way to flow one stream of text from box to box across pages. For a twelve-page leaflet that is mostly liturgy, Word may be easier, because text flows from page to page on its own. Some parishes may end up with both: a Canva cover and insert, and a Word file for the service itself.

If you're moving the Sunday leaflet into Canva, our step-by-step guide covers the folded booklet, fonts and printing.

Canva for Nonprofits and your parish

Canva for Nonprofits gives eligible organizations Canva's paid features free. In the US, Canva asks for proof of 501(c)(3) status, and churches are decided case by case.

Most parishes don't have an IRS letter of their own. Their tax-exempt status comes through the Episcopal Church. Diocesan offices provide the paperwork: the Diocese of Connecticut, for example, issues certifications to its parishes on request, and the Diocese of Northern Indiana tells parishes to ask the diocesan office for documentation. Start there. Canva makes the final decision, and approval can take a few days.

Questions

Are old service leaflets part of the parish records?

The parish register and vestry minutes are the official records, and they're kept separately. Leaflets are the everyday history: which hymns were sung at a funeral, who was baptized on which Sunday. They're worth keeping, and PDF is a good way to keep them.

Our 8:00 and 10:30 services use different leaflets. Is that a problem?

No, but treat them as two templates. Save both, name the files so you can tell them apart, and rebuild both if you move to Canva or Word.

Can the diocese arrange this for several parishes?

Yes. We quote a fixed price for several parishes at once. Ask through the free file check.

If you have years of leaflets and no time

Holy Week alone can be four or five long leaflets a year. Multiply that by twenty years.

That's what we do. Send us the folder. We turn every file into a searchable PDF, remove the duplicates, sort everything by year and type, and rebuild the templates you still use in Canva. Archive is $249 for up to 2,000 files. Complete is $495 and adds 3 templates rebuilt in Canva, a 45-minute training call, and help applying for Canva for Nonprofits. You pay after delivery.

Not sure how many you have? Count your Publisher files free. It runs in your browser, and nothing is uploaded.

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Or call or leave a message: (207) 776-7530

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