Microsoft is closing out two long-running products within the same two weeks of October. Publisher, the desktop publishing app that has shipped with Office since the Windows 3.x era, disappears from Microsoft 365 subscriptions on October 1, and the perpetual, one-time-purchase versions of Office 2021 lose all support less than two weeks later. Anyone still running Publisher, Office LTSC 2021 or consumer Office 2021 has a narrow window left to convert files, migrate workflows or accept that no further fixes are coming.
The retirement is not a surprise announcement. Microsoft flagged Publisher’s end in 2024, and the company’s own support documentation has carried a firm October 2026 date ever since. What changes now is that the deadline has arrived close enough to affect real files and real deadlines this autumn.
The October 1 cutoff for Microsoft 365
According to Microsoft’s own retirement notice, Microsoft 365 subscribers can keep using Publisher with its current functionality only until October 1, 2026. After that date, subscribers lose the ability to open or edit Publisher files inside the app entirely, regardless of how recently they last used it. Microsoft’s guidance is explicit that files should be converted to another format, ideally PDF or Word, before the cutoff, since Publisher’s native .pub format will no longer be readable once access ends.
Microsoft has published a sample PowerShell script that can bulk-convert folders of .pub files to PDF, aimed at organisations with large archives of newsletters, flyers, forms and brochures built in the app over the years.
Twelve more days for the boxed version
Owners of the perpetual, non-subscription version of Publisher are not cut off on October 1. Their support continues until October 13, 2026, the same day Office LTSC 2021 and consumer Office 2021 reach end of support. That means a person who bought a one-time Office 2021 licence, rather than a Microsoft 365 subscription, keeps functional access to Publisher, Word, Excel and the rest of the suite past the subscription deadline, but only until that second date. After October 13, Microsoft stops issuing security patches, bug fixes and technical support for any Office 2021 product, perpetual Publisher included.
No extended updates for Office 2021
Microsoft’s lifecycle documentation confirms there is no paid Extended Security Updates programme for Office 2021, unlike some past Windows and server products that offered a bridge for stragglers. Organisations that stay on Office LTSC 2021 past October 13 are told plainly to expect no further technical support, bug fixes or security updates, which the documentation says can increase exposure to security risks and affect compliance requirements. Microsoft’s recommended path is to move to Microsoft 365 Apps now, or, for organisations not ready to leave on-premises software, to upgrade to Office LTSC 2024 instead.
One third-party vendor is stepping into that gap. 0patch has said it will supply unofficial patches for critical vulnerabilities in Office 2021 for at least three more years after Microsoft’s support ends, a stopgap aimed at organisations that cannot upgrade on Microsoft’s timeline but still want some protection against newly discovered flaws.
Project Online closes down the same week
Publisher is not the only product on Microsoft’s October calendar. Project Online, the cloud-based project management service, retires on September 30, 2026. The following day, Project Online Essentials, a lower-cost licensing tier that gave users limited access to Project Online and Project Server without the full capabilities of Microsoft’s pricier plans, reaches end of life as well. Essentials has not been available for new customers to purchase since October 2025, so its closure mainly affects organisations that bought in before that cutoff and have not yet migrated. Microsoft is telling remaining Project Online Essentials customers to move affected users to a supported alternative before October 1 to avoid losing access mid-project.
The two retirements landing in the same stretch of the calendar is coincidental rather than coordinated, but it means IT administrators juggling both products face overlapping deadlines rather than a staggered rollout. Reporting on the pairing noted that the Project Online closure could catch out organisations that assumed the Essentials tier, being the cheapest option, would stick around longer than it has.
Where Publisher’s workload is supposed to go
Publisher has no direct one-to-one replacement inside Microsoft’s current lineup. Instead, Microsoft’s support page walks through where each common Publisher task should move: flyers, ads, brochures and business cards shift to Word or PowerPoint, banners, signs and posters move to PowerPoint specifically, and envelopes, labels, letterhead and newsletters move to Word. Microsoft also points users toward its Microsoft Create site for ready-made templates that replicate some of the layouts Publisher offered natively, covering categories from business cards and certificates through to folded programmes and greeting cards. The company acknowledges the transition may not be seamless for heavier desktop-publishing users, since Word and PowerPoint were not built around the same print-layout tools Publisher specialised in, and some multi-page, precisely positioned layouts are likely to need manual rework rather than a clean import.
The migration options for Project users
For displaced Project Online Essentials customers, Microsoft’s recommended landing spots are Planner Plan 1 or the combined Planner and Project Plan 3 tier, chosen according to how much Project Server access and reporting depth a given team actually needs. Both carry different costs and feature sets than the licence being retired, which is likely to mean a modest price increase for some organisations rather than a like-for-like swap. Outside Microsoft’s own ecosystem, third-party tools are also positioning themselves as landing spots: ProjectLibre, for instance, launched a new ProjectLibre Cloud AI edition this week priced at just under $10 per user per month on an annual plan, aimed squarely at teams leaving Project Online Essentials rather than upgrading to a costlier Microsoft tier.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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