Built for a quick look
Most people who open a .pub file just want to see what is in it: the church bulletin, the school flyer, the price list, the club newsletter. The viewer shows the first page as soon as the file is ready, usually within a few seconds, with the rest one tap away.
There are no ads around the preview, nothing to sign up for, and no app to install. Close the tab when you are done, or press "Delete now" to remove the file straight away.
What the viewer does
- Page thumbnails down the side on a computer, or along the top on a phone, so you can jump to any page.
- Zoom from 50% to 300%, to read small print or see a whole page at once.
- Keyboard control: click the page and use the left and right arrow keys to turn pages.
- Font warnings: if the document uses a font we do not have, the viewer says which, so you know where text may look slightly different.
- A deletion countdown, so you always know how long the file will stay on our servers.
Viewer and converter in one
Other tools make you pick a viewer or a converter up front. Here the same upload gives you both: look first, then download a PDF, or PNG or JPG images, only if the file is the one you wanted.
If you want to change the text, the PDF is the best starting point. See Publisher to Word for how to turn it into an editable document.
A viewer for every device
Publisher never ran on anything but Windows. This viewer runs in any modern browser, so the same steps work on a Windows PC, a Mac, an iPhone or iPad, and Android phones and Chromebooks.
Which Publisher files it can show
Files saved by Publisher 98 through Publisher 2021 and Microsoft 365 generally open, including single-page flyers, multi-page newsletters and booklets, and cards with folded layouts. Each file can be up to 25 MB and 200 pages.
Password-protected publications and badly damaged files cannot be read. When that happens the viewer tells you plainly, rather than showing a blank or broken page, so you know to ask the sender for another copy or a PDF.
Private by design
Your file is shown only to you. The preview sits behind a long random link held by your browser, there is no public gallery, and the file and its pages are deleted within 60 minutes. Nobody looks at the files that are uploaded.