I am in urgent need of finding a program that can read and write files produced by someone using Microsoft Publisher. (Files with the .pub extension.)

I am using Ubuntu and work in a Microsoft free zone.

Thanks for your time in advance.

My work network, which is 100% Microsoft, and huge, with a BIG investment in MS, are the only ones that (very occasionally) send me .pub files. They do not even open at work, with MS's OS installed throughout. Calls to (Corporate) IT => "We seem to be having a problem with compatability. Please ask the sender to resend the document in another format".

Well, if MS cannot sort this out, why should we even be starting?

So try asking them to resend in another format. Perhaps an open one, for which the protocols and formatting are more widely understood and publicised.

Sounds like sound advice.

Thanks so much.

Three years later, I'm reviving this thread because some MS-infected folks are sending me files in "pub" format. It seems to be binary, I assume it decrypts to something html-like, I would hope that there's some way to read it in linux (I suppose MS might provide a viewer that might work with wine, but I'm hoping for something a bit more direct.) Any suggestions?

update 20 minutes later: zamzar.com (which I see has been mentioned on this site in other contexts) does a reasonable job of converting from binary "pub" format to html, also offers several other formats.

Just be careful that anything that you are submitting to that site contains no confidential or harmful information. Essentially your documents could be getting stored on a hard drive somewhere.