Will my fonts and layout survive?

Microsoft Publisher (.pub) is the desktop publishing application included in some Microsoft Office Professional and 365 editions on Windows, used for newsletters, brochures, flyers, business cards, and church bulletins. Publisher has no native macOS, iOS, Android, or Linux client - it's Windows-only, which makes .pub files notoriously difficult to share. Recipients on Mac or mobile typically cannot open them without buying the Office Professional license and a Windows machine or VM. Converting PUB to HEIC produces a compact per-page image in the format Apple devices handle natively - a natural fit when the people who can't open the .pub are exactly the Mac and iPhone users.

The .pub format is proprietary, undocumented at the byte level by Microsoft, and only loosely supported by third-party tools. LibreOffice Draw can open Publisher 2003 and earlier files reasonably well via reverse-engineered importers, but later versions (Publisher 2007/2010/2013/2016/2019/365) have additional features that often fail to round-trip. The cleanest conversion path is to open the file in Publisher itself and use File > Export > Save as PDF, then run PDF-to-HEIC. This converter routes through that pipeline server-side, rasterizing each page at the publication's page size and encoding it as HEIC at roughly half the file size of a JPG render.

Small businesses, churches, schools, and community organizations whose previous secretary used Publisher to create the weekly bulletin or quarterly newsletter are the typical audience. When the original .pub file is the only surviving copy and the recipients are reading on iPhones and iPads, HEIC-per-page opens natively in Photos and Mail with zero installs. For mixed audiences that include Windows or Android readers, convert the output onward via HEIC to JPG. For ongoing editing migrate to Affinity Publisher (Mac/Win, opens PUB via PDF intermediate) or Scribus (free, cross-platform, no native PUB support but excellent for new layouts).

Reasons to convert PUB to HEIC usually come down to compatibility, file-size, or specific feature requirements. Common situations:

• An app or platform only accepts HEIC uploads.
• You need a feature unique to HEIC (e.g. transparency, vector scaling, animation, multi-page pages, etc.) that PUB doesn't provide.
• You're optimising file size — modern formats often produce smaller files than the older format you started with.
• You need a single archival format across a project so files behave consistently in the same viewer.

1. Open the PUB → HEIC tool on heic.now.
2. Drag your PUB file onto the drop zone, or click Select files. You can drop a whole folder of files at once.
3. The output is fixed to HEIC. If the format supports extra options (page size, transparency background, quality, EXIF stripping), tweak them in the right-hand panel.
4. Click Convert. The job runs on our server and finishes in a few seconds for typical photos.
5. Download the result. Files stay in storage for 24 hours and are then permanently deleted.

The entire flow is free for the first 10 jobs per day with no signup required. A free account doubles that quota; a premium plan removes the limit entirely.

• If you have access to Windows, open the file in Publisher and use File > Export > Create PDF/XPS Document for the cleanest export, then convert PDF to HEIC.
• LibreOffice Draw opens .pub files (Publisher 98-2003) on Mac and Linux via File > Open - imperfect but often usable as a preview.
• Affinity Publisher 2 (Mac/Win/iPad) imports PDFs cleanly - export from Publisher to PDF on a Windows machine first, then continue editing in Affinity.
• For one-off conversions without Windows access, this converter routes through a headless rendering pipeline that handles Publisher 2007-2019 files.
• Migrate away from Publisher long-term to Affinity Publisher, Adobe InDesign, Scribus, or Canva for cross-platform team collaboration.