MS Publisher

[valterb]

Does anyone know how to read a file formatted with MS Publisher, and has a *.pub extension?

Valter

[aussie149]

[rays]

Depending on how much it's worth to you, possible solution:

http://www.docudesk.com/deskPDF_Publisher_to_PDF.shtml

And advertised as 'coming soon':

http://www.internew.com/websites/convertpub.html

[valterb]

Thanks a lot to both of you!

Valter

[johndilbeck]

Hi,

I'm late to this conversation, but I think I've found something that will interest you.

I had a client who wants a website, but all his documents are in Publisher .PUB format. I searched for over a week (off and on) to find a way to access the information in those files.

Finally, I found a free online service that can convert PUB (and other formats) into PDF files.

Go to http://www.pdfonline.com/convert_pdf.asp and upload the PUB file and the PDF will be emailed to you.

I then used Preview to extract the text and graphics.

I used the Grab selection tool to copy the graphics on the brochure and save as GIF files. This took a matter of seconds.

On the brochure, the text was in columnar form, so, in Preview, I selected the text tool and held down the Option key while dragging to select just one column. Then it was a simple matter of copying the text and pasting it into TextWrangler.

I recommend this tool highly, because it was the only way I could find, after searching for other methods for several days, to convert a Microsoft Publisher .PUB file into text and graphics I could re-use on my Mac.

There may be other ways, but this works so well that I won't bother looking any more.

Total time from finding the site to having the extracted text and graphics ready to build the site was under a half hour, and that was mainly because I'm on a very slow dial-up line and it took some time to upload the PUB files to the service and to download the converted PDF files when they emailed them to me. With broadband, it would have taken 10 or 15 minutes.

I believe they have a 2 MB limit on files to be converted.

Hope that helps,

JD

BTW, I'm brand new here and this is my first post. I'm trying to find a way to install and use NeoOffice. I'm on a slow dial-up line and looking for a CD with NeoOffice 2.1 on it. Then I can join the party.

[Samwise]

Thanks for the info.

Also, we used to sell NeoOffice CDs but the demand was very low and so it was decided to stop distributing them. However, we recently came across a Linux CD distributor which provides NeoOffice 2.1 discs for $2.25 (link). The site appears to be temporarily unavailable though. If you can get the CD, you'll still want to download the latest patch, which is much smaller than the full installer (currently about 4 MB).

[johndilbeck]

Hi Samwise,

Thanks for the info.

I understand limited resources and volunteers and setting limits on what can be done, but it should be easier to get NeoOffice 2.1 on CD somewhere.

I've searched for two days and only found a source in South Africa.

There is a version 2.0 CD available on Lulu.com and I've written the seller to see if they will have a 2.1 version available.

So far, I'm unable to get a CD, and I'd really like to join this party.

I'm surprised that no Mac users groups or magazines have jumped at the chance to include NeoOffice on CD.

Back when I was a SysAdmin, it would have been no trouble downloading, but now that I'm living in a cabin in the mountains where broadband is unavailable, I just can't imagine trying to download 145 MB. The 8 MB upgrade patch will only take a few hours, but the full download would take about four full days.



Oh, well, I'm way off topic for this thread, so I'll stop here and keep trying to find a source for the CD. I'll check the site that's unavailable in a couple of days to see if they're back up.

Thanks for your help.

All the best,

JD

[sardisson]

I tossed Peter and John's tips up on the wiki, as this seems to be a somewhat-common question, and both are good solutions.

Smokey