Microsoft publisher and open office?

elsien

Trying to work from home at the moment but the documents I've got are publisher and my openoffice 2.0 doesn't recognise them. Is there a newer openoffice version that might work, does anyone know?

Old_Wrinkly

I don't know about how it works with MS Publisher stuff (the site http://www.openoffice.org will probably answer this for you) but the latest version is 3.2.1 (with 3.3.0 on Beta).

fenlander_uk

An online format conversion site like zamzar should be able to convert .pub files to something that will open in OpenOffice. However, Publisher is desktop publishing so it's unlikely that the document format will be reproduced perfectly and even less likely that any work you do on it will be re-convertible to Publisher afterwards.

boxst

OpenOffice can work with Excel, Powerpoint and Word documents. It doesn't like Publisher files as the layout structure is quite complex.

There are online convertors (quick Google: http://www.zamzar.com/ (for free)) but you will get some layout problems and not really be able to convert it back.

steve

aerostar

Publisher was and is a peculiar beast and some versions to version were not compatible with each other, new copy seems to be around £70.

ScratchandSniff-->[X]

Another option if you or whoever is providing the publisher files still have access to publisher - it can save in a variety of formats with differing degrees of success. Some may convert the file to an image rather than editable text, whilst others may convert any graphics to different file types, or be done editable. It does depend of the complexity of the design, and the overall layout may not be honoured perfectly.

If you need to create some DTP stuff from scratch, there's normally older versions of SERIF Page Plus or similar available free from time to time.

free4440273

http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/

poppy10_2

free4440273 wrote: »

http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/

How does posting that help? It's just a fork of Open Office, and has no more support for Publisher formats than OO.

Owain_Moneysaver

I haven't checked, but Adobe (used to?) offer a service where you could upload a document to their website and they would convert it to PDF.

Depending on how successfully, you might then be able to open the PDF and copy/paste the text into Openoffice. But that'll be about as good as it gets.

poppy10_2

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

I haven't checked, but Adobe (used to?) offer a service where you could upload a document to their website and they would convert it to PDF.

Depending on how successfully, you might then be able to open the PDF and copy/paste the text into Openoffice. But that'll be about as good as it gets.

That would only really let you view the .pub files, not edit them, at least not directly.

Better option would be to download and install the free Publisher 2007 trial. You can then view and edit programs for 30 days; if you don't want to pay for the product once the trial has finished, it will still let you open and view files, just not edit them.

spenderdave

MS Publisher and .pub format files are a unique format and ONLY Publisher understands them. As Desk Top Publishing is a totally separate application from the normal Office files, the nearest equivalent in OpenOffice is its Drawing module with .odg, but in reality it is totally different and certainly cannot import .pub files.

The main free open source DTP program is Scribus, http://www.scribus.net, which can do similar things to Publisher. But although it can import some other formats, .pub is not one of them. You may be able to find some conversion programs out there which can convert to something that Scribus can import.

The only other option is for your employer to supply you with a licenced copy of Publisher to use on your home computer...