RIP Publisher

From the “I didn’t know that was still around” department: I fired up Microsoft Publisher for the first time in a looooong while this evening to help my daughter with a school project, and I was greeted by a notice that the product is being retired in December 2026. Time to move on to something else.

On the one hand, I think this is long overdue. I never really thought Publisher was particularly necessary, given that Word can do pretty much everything it can do. I suppose it’s a little user friendlier in places, but mostly it’s a remnant of a bygone era of desktop publishing, where the layout was more important than the actual content. And another cryptic file format that was largely incompatible with anything else.

But at the same time, I’m a little nostalgic for those simpler days, when there seemed to be a specialized Office software product for every niche use. I suspect Access may be next on the chopping block.

Pour one out for good ol’ Publisher.