News MS Publisher is being discontinued, and removed from Office 365

[mikeymikec]

Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported after October 2026 - Microsoft Support

support.microsoft.com

I found this out yesterday after double-checking what a customer's options are for migrating from an old PC.

I find it interesting that Microsoft wouldn't announce this while Publisher 2021 was still available for purchase, thereby allowing users to buy a final version that should tide them over for some time after it magically disappears from 365 installs. Nah, wait until they've yanked it from the Microsoft site's store, then drop the bomb on users.

"Many common Publisher scenarios—including creating professionally branded templates, printing envelopes and labels, and producing customized calendars, business cards, and programs—are already available in other Microsoft 365 apps such as Word and PowerPoint." - many common Publisher scenarios except the opening of Publisher documents. What Publisher user could possibly want to open a Publisher doc?

Since Microsoft Office Outlook's days are also numbered, I wondered if Access was on the chopping block too, but apparently not yet (Access 2024 is available to purchase direct from MS).

 

[igor_kavinski]

Since Microsoft Office Outlook's days are also numbered

Seriously? Like REALLY REALLY for REAL???

More information please!

 

[mikeymikec]

Seriously? Like REALLY REALLY for REAL???

More information please!

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...-365-for/f8619802-b9b5-4035-a14a-f53a45c14473

 

[igor_kavinski]

They say that it will work till 2029 though. So the Office bundled Outlook isn't going away soon enough

 

[lxskllr]

I thought Outlook was a business standard? I've never used it, but I couldn't imagine not using a mail client for mail. Actually, I can imagine it, and I imagine it sucks. I hate webmail.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I hate webmail.

I hate Outlook so much (because of its quirks. Stops receiving email. Need to reset and start from scratch to get it working again. PST problems etc.) that I have no choice but to use Outlook Web. The only mail client I found tolerable was Windows Live Mail (the first one) but of course M$ had to go ahead and mess it up by replacing it with a buggy newer version and then killing it forever.

Windows Live Mail actually allowed me to automate a very critical task at work that was extremely cumbersome. Since it stores emails as EML files, I just had to write a tool to search those files, parse them, extract attachments out of them and then convert those XML attachments to Excel files. It worked so beautifully that I could have cried with joy. Could never have done that with Outlook.

 

[lxskllr]

Don't like Thunderbird? I've been using that since it existed. Evolution isn't bad either, or it wasn't ~10 years ago when I tried it, but I prefer Tbird. I use it both on pc and on phone.

edit:
if you need Exchange, Tbird is out, but I believe Evolution supports it. To what extent, I don't know. Never worked with Exchange.

 

[igor_kavinski]

It may be good but I just hate email in general. It's a mess that the greatest minds in the world have not tried to fix

 

[mikeymikec]

I thought Outlook was a business standard? I've never used it, but I couldn't imagine not using a mail client for mail. Actually, I can imagine it, and I imagine it sucks. I hate webmail.

I believe that forcing customers to switch to a slower, less-feature-laden app with ads is what Microsoft calls "progress" these days. It may be a universally worse solution for its users, but it's easier for Microsoft to make more money, and at the end of the day, that's the most important function of innovation, isn't it?

Do you know what the best part of the new "Outlook (new)" app is? It has been in release state for over a year and yet is still missing one of the most basic features of any mail client: The ability to alter how your name looks in the 'sender' field of outgoing e-mails. If your e-mail provider doesn't provide Microsoft with that information during the account setup process, your 'sender' info is simply your e-mail address.

Regarding Thunderbird - yup, it's been my mail client for ~20 years. The only problem is that it doesn't have native Exchange support, and Microsoft seems to be in the process of yanking POP/IMAP support from their services (I say "seems to be" because their free e-mail service has it, but commercial solutions that outsource to MS often don't). There's a paid add-on for TB that one of my customers uses but it does some odd things like a window temporarily appears over the TB window with an Outlook logo on it, disappears again then you get to the main TB screen.