Robb's Not Real Impressed With Micorosft Publisher
I use it for business cards, flyers, newsletters, and other lightweight desktop publishing projects. Microsoft Publisher is OK for quick …
Starting at $139 one time purchase
View PricingOverview
What is Microsoft Publisher?
Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing application available with an Office 365 subscription, or as a standalone download.
Recent Reviews
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Pricing
Microsoft Publisher
$139
On Premise
one time purchase
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Microsoft Publisher?
Microsoft Publisher Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing application available with an Office 365 subscription, or as a standalone download.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.
The most common users of Microsoft Publisher are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(43)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
July 21, 2022
Robb's Not Real Impressed With Micorosft Publisher
I use it for business cards, flyers, newsletters, and other lightweight desktop publishing projects. Microsoft Publisher is OK for quick and easy desktop publishing projects. It's useful because we have a lot of Microsoft Publisher boilerplate built up over the years so we can just take a previous project and repurpose it. When used that way it's time-efficient and cost-effective. It is not our first choice for new projects that demands detail and real creative energy.
- Business cards
- Internal memos that use a logo or a little bit of design.
- Quick and simple flyers for internal events.
- Formatting in general. It's a pain to refine a layout in Publisher in my opinion.
- Microsoft is so invested in their approach to software and making it look and feel like an Office 365 application that they inadvertantly cripple applications like Publisher.
- Earlier versions of Publisher gave you a lot more latitude and creative freedom. They were also much easier to work with. Not everything has to look like it's part of Office 365. They did the same ... thing to Access.
- It's very cheap since it is part of Office 365.
- Since we have years of experience with Publisher and a lot of boilerplate, we can turn some documents over quickly.
- Because it is part of Office 365 we have familiarity with the interface.
- It's a sunk cost so on easy projects there's a positive ROI.
- Because it's not very good at creating long and/or complex documents we needed to obtain other applications to create long and/or complex documents.
- It's just so not essential to what we do that the positive or negative ROI is negligible.
At the time I was not impressed with Quark Xpress. I always disliked PageMaker. I always considered it over-rated. I like InDesign and have always liked InDesign, if I have a need for more complex documents I'll go with InDesign over Publisher or Quark Xpress in a heartbeat. InDesign is just a better platform for longer, more complex documents.
Yes
Adobe InDesign. At the time it was cheaper and easier to work with. It was easier to train people on simple jobs including; one-page flyers, banners, and short documents that needed styling, and graphics. Microsoft Publisher had a smaller footprint and worked faster. The only other option was Quark Xpress which was a very good app on the Mac but performed like a total slug on a PC.
- Price
- Product Usability
- Prior Experience with the Product
Price, price, price. There was no good reason to spend a few hundred additional dollars on InDesign when it was only going to be used for small jobs. Clients would flinch when they saw the price for Adobe InDesign but had absolutely no problem paying for Microsoft Publisher. It was also cheaper for a client to pay me to train their staff since it took a lot less time.
Since there were only three viable options in the late '90s I wouldn't change anything at all. What software developers don't quite understand is that small businesses look at price first and total usability last. InDesign was/is an excellent desktop publishing platform but most small businesses and/or small departments did not need most of its capabilities.
April 26, 2022
Simple Program that Creates Fantastic Results!
I use Microsodt Publisher to create quick signs or flyers. As a construction company, there is always something that we need to create quickly that is specific to one job or client. This program allows me to create and save templates that I can customize to each job, or I can start from scratch and put something together in minutes that looks professional for our client.
- Importing photos to insert into flyers or documents.
- Creating quick signs for either directions or safety at jobsites so the superintendents can have them right away.
- There is a wealth of pre-loaded shapes, fonts, and clip arts that allows for a professional looking document without having to have a graphic design degree to figure it out.
- Overall I don't have any issues using this program.
- The ability to import photos and logos for each specific client.
- The ease of adding text boxes, images, etc. to create balanced and professional-looking flyers or brochures.
- The ability to import client-specific fonts/colors in order to personalize to each individual job.
- The ability to create and save templates for use on future projects.
- I have been able to create flyers and brochures that in the past we sent out to a marketing company and spent a ton of money on something I was able to do myself in minutes.
- The quick and simple user experience has allowed us to create signs that are designed to keep people safe on our job sites. This is important because we take safety very seriously and sometimes need to be able to produce these signs in a matter of minutes so that the superintendent can safely mark off areas to avoid.
- The program has taken the place of Word and Excel in many cases to make documents like proposals look more balanced and professional.
August 03, 2021
Microsoft Publisher Offers Me the Features and Control to Design a Variety of Documents
Currently, Publisher is used only in my department. The company prefers Adobe Suite. I, however, prefer Publisher. It provides a much simpler interface that allows me to do all the things that the more expensive and complex Adobe In-Design can do. I use Publisher to produce a quarterly full-color magazine that has ranged from as few as 28 pages to as many as 56. The magazine is full of internal and external hyperlinks. In addition, I have just created a nearly 400 page quarterly planner with somewhere between 1500-2000 internal hyperlinks to various days and sections and pages within sections. I upload the pdf and use it on my Remarkable 2. Couldn't use it there without first designing it in Publisher. If there is some document that has a graphic, I will be working on it in Publisher. For me, Publisher is used for virtually all of my daily writing. If I use Word it is most often to create text that is then pulled into Publisher and laid out for the document I am creating. I could not do my day-to-day job without Publisher.
- Design of my quarterly full color magazine: (usually 28-56 pages in length)
- Design of the quarterly planning system used by me and others in the annual conference.
- Design and layout of any document that requires graphics/photos.
- Simple to use with ample flexibility and strength of features
- The greatest shortcoming is large (300+ page documents) that require lots of internal hyperlinks. While it can do it, I can tell, due to the way it bogs down, that I am pushing the program to its limits.
- I would like to be able to work better with pdf's. I would like the ability to import a pdf of a graph, picture, or some other object directly into a Publisher document. Currently, I have to first convert the pdf to a jpeg and then import the jpeg. I have not found a way around this issue.
- At one point, I thought I had the option to automatically turn off hyphenation. Somewhere along the way, it seems as if the default for everything is hyphenation is turned on. I detest hyphenation and turning it off on every box I create becomes cumbersome.
- More options for graphics. Particularly the defaults that allow you to place "frames" and effects around photos. More options.
- Ease of use
- Versatility in its design capabilities
- It produces a good quality end product
- Don't really have a way to measure ROI in my industry (Religious organization), but let me say, Publisher is at the heart of the way that I do things. If I did not have it, then my productivity would be crushed and the ability to communicate with individuals within the annual conference would be greatly diminished.
- Publisher allows me to produce quality, sometimes complex, documents in a simple and efficient manner.
- It has been my go-to program for the majority of my communication needs for more than 10 years. It would be difficult to do my job without Publisher.
Publisher wins hand down. To be honest, In-Design can do things with more precision and perhaps a somewhat better final design. However, the learning curve is WAY too steep for In-Design. I have been using computers and publishing programs since the mid 80's. Publisher melds together the best of word processing, design, and layout into a fairly simple (at least to me) program that has met and I anticipate will continue to meet my needs for many years to come.
- Placing a photo on the page and knowing that it will be precisely where you placed it.
- Working with multi-page documents that contain internal hyperlinks.
- Knowing that text is going to flow around my graphics without a lot of tweaking on my part.
- Hyperlinks in large (300+ page) documents are very slow to connect.
- Inability to use pdf's inserts.
- Inability to move between portrait and landscape design from within a document. Don't use this often, but it would be great to have the option.
No
July 30, 2021
Great for basic needs
There is access to Microsoft Publisher for every employee, but it is not used by everyone. I mainly used it to [create] invitations, certificates, or posters advertising events at the college. It was easy to use, had templates that made it easy to create whatever document I was trying to create. And once I had made, for example, one certificate it was easy to just change the information and use it again and again.
- The templates are great
- It’s very user friendly for anyone familiar with Microsoft suite
- It’s easier to manipulate images on your workspace than using Microsoft word
- More options or more blank templates
- User friendly
- Easy to master
- Comes with the Microsoft suite
- It’s just been helpful to create some basic documents
Microsoft Publisher is more for beginners, or for basic needs, anyone with some familiarity with the Microsoft suite should be able to use it easily. If you’re looking to create something more graphic and advanced, you’d probably want to look into something like InDesign, which is not as user friendly if you’re not familiar with it at all. For basic needs the average employee should be able to use Microsoft Publisher with ease.
June 24, 2021
We helped our business grow with Microsoft Publisher
We use Microsoft Publisher for multiple purposes:
1) MS PowerPoint cannot do some of the artwork diagramming possible in MS Publisher, so we create the artwork in Publisher and copy it over to PowerPoint.
2) MS Publisher is used to create diagrams to be inserted into proposals created with MS Word
3) MS Publisher is used to create sales literature (flyers, brochures)
1) MS PowerPoint cannot do some of the artwork diagramming possible in MS Publisher, so we create the artwork in Publisher and copy it over to PowerPoint.
2) MS Publisher is used to create diagrams to be inserted into proposals created with MS Word
3) MS Publisher is used to create sales literature (flyers, brochures)
- System Design Architecture diagramming
- Information Flow Diagrams
- Brochures & Pamphlets
- Incorporate item templates similar to Visio
- Ability to save document to a vectorized format
- Microsoft Publisher is more freeform than Microsoft PowerPoint
- Creates nicer looking diagrams than a similar effort using Visio