What is Microsoft Publisher?

Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing application available with an Office 365 subscription, or as a standalone download.

What is Microsoft Publisher's best feature?

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.

Who uses Microsoft Publisher?

The most common users of Microsoft Publisher are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).

Microsoft Publisher Usability, Reviews & Ratings 2024

Deployment Types	On-premise
Operating Systems	Windows
Mobile Application	No

August 03, 2021

Microsoft Publisher Offers Me the Features and Control to Design a Variety of Documents

Terry Goodman

Secretary of the Annual conference

Holston Annual Conference (Religious Institutions, 11-50 employees)

Score 10 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Publisher, for me, is best suited for a document with graphics/photos and text. I cannot use Word for this. Too hard to get the graphic/photo to behave and stay where I put it. In Publisher, I put the graphic/photo on the page and it stays where I put it. The text then flows around it. Seems to me as if Word works in the opposite manner.
Publisher also allows me better control of the overall look of multi-page documents. I design lots of magazine-style docs and I know that whether they are printed or viewed online that I will have everything exactly where I want it to be.

Most Important Features

Ease of use
Versatility in its design capabilities
It produces a good quality end product

Return on Investment

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.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe InDesign

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.

Other Software Used

Kofax Power PDF (formerly Nuance), Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Snagit

Usability

It has a great feature set but does not overwhelm me with its complexity. This is not an entry-level program, but it is also not one of the top of line graphic designer programs, like Abode In-Design. I can use Publisher to do 95% of what I need to get done. The other 5% I farm out to the graphics design person in the organization. It simply works and does so in a simple to use manner.

Easy Tasks

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.

Difficult Tasks

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.

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$139

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