MS publisher files on a Mac?
anyone know of a way to open/work with MS publisher files under OSX?
i was doing some computer work for a young lady who's fed up with her PC, and has been toying with switching to a Mac. her problem is that she runs a small business, and all of her advertisements/catalogs have been done in publisher. i didn't know off the top of my head what, if any program(s) would open those on a Mac. i said i'd ask around and see what i cound find.
so anyone out there do this before? if so, what programs did you use, and how true was the conversion to the original document.
oh, as an aside, her reasons for switching, in order.
1. her PC crashed all the time. (i upgraded her to win2k, that seems to have helped with some system crashes)
2. then her financial software crapped out. the quickbooks folks came to look at her records, and said that she'd need to hire a quickbooks programmer x() to get her financial data in order.
3. she'd been trying w/o any luck for weeks to get her two printers/scanners working with no luck. i spent about an hour, then wanted to double check and make sure the hardware was ok. i'd gone through 3 sets of drivers, various patches and updates, and hadn't found it yet. so for kicks, i plug said devices into my Powerbook, and they popped right up. she was both amazed and disgusted at the same time.
(finally did get them working, system needed a chipset update
)
so, back to the main topic. plublisher anyone?
i was doing some computer work for a young lady who's fed up with her PC, and has been toying with switching to a Mac. her problem is that she runs a small business, and all of her advertisements/catalogs have been done in publisher. i didn't know off the top of my head what, if any program(s) would open those on a Mac. i said i'd ask around and see what i cound find.
so anyone out there do this before? if so, what programs did you use, and how true was the conversion to the original document.
oh, as an aside, her reasons for switching, in order.
1. her PC crashed all the time. (i upgraded her to win2k, that seems to have helped with some system crashes)
2. then her financial software crapped out. the quickbooks folks came to look at her records, and said that she'd need to hire a quickbooks programmer x() to get her financial data in order.
3. she'd been trying w/o any luck for weeks to get her two printers/scanners working with no luck. i spent about an hour, then wanted to double check and make sure the hardware was ok. i'd gone through 3 sets of drivers, various patches and updates, and hadn't found it yet. so for kicks, i plug said devices into my Powerbook, and they popped right up. she was both amazed and disgusted at the same time.
(finally did get them working, system needed a chipset update
)so, back to the main topic. plublisher anyone?
Comments
anyone out there know? come on, i know you want to tell me, most likely there's a switch hanging in the balance. some good mac zealot should be able to help me out.
-alcimedes
I deal with this quite often, but unfortunately, I can't think of a catch all solution that works 100% of the time.
Let me quickly just state that Publisher is an evil plague. I cringe when someone expects to get something from Publisher to press.
Anyhow, it seems like we had someone save their Publisher files as .eps files. We would have placed the .eps into Quark and gone from there. I can't remember if this works when they have photos and text, or just text, or if I'm totally dreaming. So, I'd recommend seeing if you can Save As .eps. You could maybe use Illustrator to make manipulations to the .eps in OS X.
Oh yeah, one other thing we run into with situations like this (usually with Word or people's Corel Draw PC files) would be font issues. We usually try to get an .eps out of these too, with text saved as "Curves" or whatever they call it in those apps. Fun stuff!
Good luck!
<strong>We usually try to get an .eps out of these too, with text saved as "Curves" or whatever they call it in those apps. Fun stuff!
Good luck!</strong><hr></blockquote>
Outlines
Fonts are the biggest issue.
Converting fonts to outlines or "strokes" is hardly a smart solution for anyone who has a lot of copy that needs to be changed on a regular basis.
However, I would suggest that the grunt work involved in changing her advertisements and documents to a STANDARD file format should be considered as a positive decision for her business. As businesses get larger they begin to either outsource their advertising to an ad firm or they create an in-house graphics department, likely using the Adobe suite of graphics applications.
This is hardly an easy way to transition to a new layout application, but if she has a lot of text she could copy the contents out to text files then export the graphical portion of the layout as EPS files (as previously suggested) then re-assemble the product in Quark or InDesign or Pagemaker (my choice for forward migration is InDesign, I really am beginning to hear more people use this despite the holdout grumblers).
A transition to a new OS can't be totally painless for someone whose entire "being" is based in another, and I don't get the feeling that you've posed it to her as being so...which is good. But, as the Mac is increasingly attempting to support industry standards, I think it would benefit her business in the long-run to move her graphics production that way. Stinks to have to spend extra time learning new software though. Most people hate to do that.
Finally, do what you're doing. Trail throught the messageboards and check out the download sites for conversion apps and plug-ins that may help to transfer the files. Go slink through the Adobe User Forums to see if there are any solutions on their end.
Good luck, I hope she switches!
D
i'll mess around some here and see if i can get them to transfer over properly.
<strong>
Outlines</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not in Corel Draw. It's "Curves". (I'm ashamed to know that!) I don't know what it is in Publisher as I've never actually seen Publisher myself.
Regarding my suggestion to convert the text to paths/outlines/curves/etc.: This would only be done as a Save As after all editing is done. I agree that it would be unwise to convert your original document.
Once again, good luck!
I can even send directly to my Dolev from VPC with the ps drivers and PC MacLan installed.
PS, oh by the way M$ will GIVE you Punisher if you are a service bureau!
[ 09-11-2002: Message edited by: Mars ]</p>
Might be fine if your designing your own flyers to print on your own printer, or your own business card to print on your ink jet. But send a Publisher file to a press and the Imaging guys will automatically double your bill when they see the .pub file tag.
My suggestion... let her keep her designs for posterity sake (the grand kids might like to see how grandma started her company) but in the long run, your much better off hiring a professional designer and letting them propel your image to higher level.
http://www.acrosoftware.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
Print to PDF from inside Publisher and she will be able to open the designs in a Mac editing package. I'm not sure how editable they will be after this process - I don't know how much vector information gets stored but any parts that can't be edited again should be fairly easily rebuilt.
Thanks!
anyone know of a way to open/work with MS publisher files under OSX?
i was doing some computer work for a young lady who's fed up with her PC, and has been toying with switching to a Mac. her problem is that she runs a small business, and all of her advertisements/catalogs have been done in publisher. i didn't know off the top of my head what, if any program(s) would open those on a Mac. i said i'd ask around and see what i cound find.
so anyone out there do this before? if so, what programs did you use, and how true was the conversion to the original document.
oh, as an aside, her reasons for switching, in order.
1. her PC crashed all the time. (i upgraded her to win2k, that seems to have helped with some system crashes)
2. then her financial software crapped out. the quickbooks folks came to look at her records, and said that she'd need to hire a quickbooks programmer x() to get her financial data in order.
3. she'd been trying w/o any luck for weeks to get her two printers/scanners working with no luck. i spent about an hour, then wanted to double check and make sure the hardware was ok. i'd gone through 3 sets of drivers, various patches and updates, and hadn't found it yet. so for kicks, i plug said devices into my Powerbook, and they popped right up. she was both amazed and disgusted at the same time.
(finally did get them working, system needed a chipset update
so, back to the main topic. plublisher anyone?
Hello .
I´m in the same situation, in PC, i save the file as pdf (using publisher 2010(beta)), then I opened the pdf in mac using Illustrator, I had some problems, with the font, the were changed as Arial,bold*, I only changed the name of the font, and anything else.
It work for a easy publication whit out images, I wish some one get a better solution, if not, i hope this work for some.
The best solution for Publisher files on the Mac is to open them in InDesign, using Markzware's excellent plugin: PUB2ID. I've been using it for years, even before it was on the market, and have found it to be a lifesaver.
Also, if you are trying to kick the Quark habit, they make a good Quark converter, too.
Read my article about this fabulous tool in American Printer.
1. Open the file in Publisher (assuming you still have access to publisher, if not then stop reading)
2. Click on file then save as an HTML or web page.
3. Move the new HTML file to the the OSX machine.
4. Right click on the HTML file and open with MS word (I have not tried with other word processors)
5. Most of the formatting should be retained and text should be in text boxes so change the layout of the page to however you need it (portrait, by default, or landscape)
6. Click on a text box then hold down shift and click the rest of the text boxes, lines, pictures, ect.
7.Change view to "print layout" (default is "web layout")
8. Use arrow keys to line up the sext with the page.
9. Play around with formatting until it looks right.
10. Click file and save as .docx or .doc
Hope this helps.
Visit Zamzar at www.zamzar.com/
It is free. I chose to convert to .docx. Other options were available.
Took seconds!!!
Hope that helps.