Bulletin Rescue Free file check

Publisher is going away. A plan for the UCC church office.

For church administrators in United Church of Christ congregations, many with long histories and long shelves of bulletins.

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.

No two UCC bulletins look alike

Each UCC congregation decides how it worships, so each office built its own bulletin from scratch. Some churches use Worship Ways, the UCC's liturgies in English and Spanish based on the Revised Common Lectionary. Many list hymns from The New Century Hymnal. Others do something entirely their own.

That freedom has a cost now. Nobody outside your office has a copy of your templates. They exist in one place: the .pub files in your office. If they stop opening, the layout your office refined over the years goes with them.

A long history, in a folder

The United Church of Christ formed in 1957, but many of its congregations are far older. Anniversary committees go looking for old bulletins and newsletters, and so do families after a funeral.

The paper bulletins from before computers are probably in a closet or the church archives. The ones your office made on a computer are part of that same history now, and they're the ones at risk, because they only exist as files a retiring program opens. A PDF of each one keeps them readable on any computer. Our guide to building a bulletin archive shows how to sort them so they can be found.

Bulletins in two languages

If your church prints bulletins in Spanish or another language alongside English, check those files with extra care after you convert them. Accented letters and special characters are the first thing to go wrong when a program swaps one font for another. Open each converted template, compare it with a printed copy, and look for missing accents, question marks where letters should be, or text in the wrong font.

Save the files, in this order

  1. The current Sunday bulletin, and each language version.
  2. The newsletter.
  3. Once-a-year services: Christmas Eve, Holy Week and Easter, confirmation, and your church's anniversary Sunday.
  4. Funeral and wedding bulletins.
  5. The back archive, all of it at once.

Check which Publisher you have under File, then Account. "Microsoft 365" stops on October 1; an older version you bought once keeps running. While it opens, save each file as a PDF and keep the .pub file next to it. Microsoft's free bulk script converts a folder at a time, but only with a working, licensed Publisher. If Publisher is already gone, LibreOffice Draw opens most .pub files for free, though stories running across linked boxes can come out jumbled. Our free guide covers each route, and our Canva guide shows how to rebuild the weekly bulletin.

Canva and the UCC group exemption

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.

The UCC has held a group ruling from the IRS since 1964 that covers local churches. If yours is included, the UCC's Office of General Counsel can send a letter confirming your church's standing, with a copy of the group exemption letter. Request it through the UCC's tax exemption resources page.

Two things to know. The letter goes to the church name and address on file, so make sure your Conference has them right. And churches granted UCC standing on or after January 20, 2026 have to ask to be included in the group exemption. Canva makes the final decision, and approval can take a few days.

Questions

We're not sure our church is in the UCC group exemption. How do we find out?

Ask the UCC's Office of General Counsel through its tax exemption resources page. Some UCC churches have their own IRS determination letter instead, so check your church's files for one too.

We have paper bulletins from before we had a computer. Can you help with those?

We work with Publisher files. For paper bulletins, our bulletin archive guide shows how to scan them and fit them into the same folders, so everything can be searched together.

Can our Conference or Association arrange this for several churches?

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

If you have hundreds of files and no time

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.

Get a free file check

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

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