How to open a .pub file on a Mac

There has never been a Mac version of Microsoft Publisher — not once in the thirty-five years since it first shipped. So the file a colleague just sent you needs a different route entirely.

If you're on a Mac, no amount of software installing gets you Publisher: Microsoft only ever made it for Windows. Preview, Pages and Word will all shrug at a .pub file.

The practical answer is to convert the file to PDF in your browser — drop it on the box on this page and you'll have a readable, printable copy in about a minute, no installation, first file free. If you need to edit the contents rather than just read them, download the Word (.docx) version as well and open it in Word for Mac or Pages.