Bringing old .pub files into Publish by Zaweba

Years of old newsletters, flyers and menus saved as .pub files don't have to be left behind. Publish by Zaweba can bring them in with File > Import .pub, which hands the conversion to a separate free app, Pub Converter by Zaweba, and then carries on with the result.

The .pub format belongs to Microsoft Publisher, the long-standing desktop publishing program in Microsoft Office. Plenty of clubs, schools, churches and small businesses have folders full of these files, and being able to open them again is often the first thing people ask about when they look for something new to work in.

How the import works

When you choose File > Import .pub, Publish checks whether Pub Converter by Zaweba is installed, using the suite's registry entry. If it is, Publish runs the converter on your file, turning it into a Publish publication (.ozp), and then you have the converted document to work with like any other. The conversion is the same one you could run by hand with the converter's command line (pubconvert, from the .pub to an .ozp), but from inside Publish you never need to type it.

If Pub Converter isn't installed, Publish offers to take you to its download page on zaweba.com, so you can install it and try again. There's no account to make and nothing to pay; like Publish, it's free software.

Checking a converted file

Converting from one program's format to another is never a perfect copy, so treat an imported file as a very good starting point rather than a finished job. Open it, go through each page, and look at the things most likely to need attention: fonts that aren't on your PC and have been replaced, text that flows slightly differently, pictures, and anything that relied on a feature Publish handles differently.

Text boxes are a good place to start. Check that stories still flow through their linked frames and that no box is showing a red plus for overflowing text. Then look at headers, footers and page numbers, and move them onto a master page if they came in as ordinary text on each page, so you only have to maintain them once.

Making the old files work going forward

Once a converted file looks right, save it as an .ozp and keep that as the new master. From then on, it's a Publish publication in every way: you can use the document palette, apply colour and font schemes, add page parts, export print-ready or web PDFs and print it.

A sensible approach for a regular publication is to convert the most recent issue, tidy it carefully, and make it the basis for the next one. There's no need to convert a whole archive in one sitting. Leave the old .pub files where they are and bring each one across when you actually need it. If you have a collection of templates you use often, such as letterheads, certificates or a menu, they're the files most worth converting and tidying first.

Keep the original .pub files too. The converter writes its result to a new .ozp file, and it's reassuring to have the originals to compare against if something on a page looks different from how you remember it.

Where this fits

Import is the bridge for people moving from an older layout program to Publish by Zaweba. Publish covers the everyday jobs those files usually hold, such as linked text, pictures with wrap, master pages, tables and print-ready PDFs, so once they're across, most work can carry on as before. It's one of the reasons the app suits anyone with a long history of .pub files they'd rather not lose.