The petition image is a collage of examples that represent the types of real-world materials created using Microsoft Publisher — tools nonprofits, schools, churches, and communities rely on every day.

Microsoft Publisher has been a critical tool for nonprofits, schools, colleges, churches, and small organizations for decades. It provides a simple, flexible desktop publishing environment that allows users to create newsletters, brochures, flyers, and outreach materials without the complexity of professional design software.

Unlike word processing tools, Publisher allows true free-form layout, enabling users to design visually rich materials that cannot be easily replicated elsewhere in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Unlike Microsoft Word, which is designed for text-based documents, Publisher allows true free-form layout. Users can work outside the page boundaries, place and layer graphics freely, and design visually complex materials efficiently. These capabilities are essential for real-world communication and cannot be replicated in Word or other Microsoft 365 tools.

Across the country and around the world, organizations rely on Publisher for mission-critical work:

• Nonprofits producing newsletters and donor communications
• Schools creating educational and event materials
• Churches designing weekly bulletins and programs
• Community organizations managing outreach and engagement

Impact on Higher Education

Microsoft Publisher is also widely used across colleges and universities for:

• Department newsletters and communications
• Student organization materials
• Academic program outreach
• Event promotion and campus publications

In many cases, Publisher is used because it provides a balance between ease of use and layout flexibility that is not available in other Microsoft tools.

Discontinuing Publisher without a comparable alternative introduces unnecessary disruption into academic environments that rely on efficient, accessible publishing tools.

Many users have built years — even decades — of work in Publisher format (.pub files). The absence of a reliable, functional conversion path puts that work at risk and creates unnecessary hardship.

We respectfully ask Microsoft to:

• Continue support for Microsoft Publisher beyond October 2026, or
• Release Publisher as a standalone perpetual product, or
• Provide a true replacement with equivalent layout and design capabilities, or
• Deliver a reliable, high-fidelity conversion tool for existing Publisher files

This is not a request for new features or innovation.
This is a request to preserve a tool that remains essential and unmatched within Microsoft’s own product suite.

Discontinuing Publisher without a viable alternative disproportionately impacts nonprofits, educators, higher education institutions, and small organizations — the very groups that rely on accessible, practical tools to serve their communities.

We urge Microsoft to reconsider and support the users who depend on Publisher every day.