Mac Software Equivalent To Microsoft Publisher
Yes, you can actually run Microsoft Office on a Mac! Not too long ago, Microsoft never bothered to translate their popular software for Apple’s Mac users mainly because Apple is still their #1 competition. But now since Apple pretty much dominates the phone market, MS had no choice but to start porting their software to work on Apple.
- Publisher is a real POS (sorry). NO other app can open it on a Mac. Your client needs to get a decent software. If not, have them PDF the document and pay you for recreating it in Quark. Better still, have them send you the copy in Word, and a sketch of what they'd like. Saves them the time of fooling around in Publisher.).
- The most up-to-date version of Microsoft Publisher is always available with an Office 365 subscription. Publisher 2019 is the latest classic version of Publisher. It is a one-time purchase that does receive updates. Previous versions include Publisher 2016, Publisher.
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As one of the world's most popular layout and design programs, Microsoft Publisher turns laypeople into amateur graphic designers. Included with the Microsoft Office expanded package, Publisher is an affordable alternative to the expensive programs that professional designers use. There's just one problem – Publisher only works on PCs. If you've recently converted to a Mac, you may feel a bit lost, but don't worry; equivalent programs are available, and some of them are free.
Apple Solution
One of the advantages of owning an Apple computer is you can use Apple software that seamlessly integrates with the Mac operating system. Visit the Mac App Store and click on the 'Productivity' category to learn about and purchase Pages, a program that many would point to as the most obvious equivalent to Publisher. With layout and design features that meet most design tasks, Pages often comes pre-installed on new macs for free. If you didn't get it for free, it is affordable. It's part of a software suite called iWork, so also take a look at its teammates Keynote and Numbers as well. All three programs can export documents in PDF, DOC and XLS formats.
Affordable and Intuitive Smooth learning curve and low price It’s Easy!Swift Publisher, being a great Microsoft Publisher for Mac alternative, is very straightforward — it only contains a handful of tools and relies on drag and drop. Books and Magazines are Welcome!Books and magazines are often designed as spreads (facing pages), so that the content can be spanned across the spread. That’s where the Facing Pages mode in Swift Publisher comes to good use. Microsoft publisher alternative mac.
Microsoft Solution
Perhaps one reason why Microsoft hasn't made a Mac version of Publisher is because it makes a Mac version of Microsoft Word that can do almost as much. Comb through a few tech blogs and forums and you'll see that people lamenting the need for Mac Publisher are usually nudged toward Microsoft Word. It's true that Word does a lot for its Mac users: With drawing tools, text effects and specialty printing settings as well as templates, you can produce fliers, brochures, banners and newsletters that look sharp. Because you might wind up buying Microsoft Office for Mac anyway for other tasks, Word is a cost-effective solution to your publishing needs.
Free Applications
Even more cost effective than Pages or Word is Apache Open Office. It's free because open source programmers produce it – just download it from Apache and install it on your hard drive. Like Microsoft Office, Open Office is a suite of programs. One member, Draw, is considered a Publisher substitute. The interface is similar and some of the menus are in the same place as Publisher's. All Open Office programs save files in their own format, but you can use the 'Save As' command to convert them to DOC, PDF and many other file formats. With Draw, you can do everything you could do in Publisher; in fact, some users prefer to show support for the open source community by using it.
Draw isn't the only free application out there: Scribus, another open source product, has plenty of fans. If your needs are simple, try Bean. It's a lightweight program, but it has all the tools you need for a flier or small newsletter.
Premium Applications
If cost isn't a big concern – maybe you're buying for your workplace – try one of the industry standards if your technical skills can meet the challenge. Adobe InDesign is the workhorse for designers around the globe. Capable of producing anything from a business card to a multisection newspaper to a 10,000-page novel, InDesign offers many complex text and layout features and tools not part of Publisher. By subscribing to Adobe's Creative Cloud, you can use it and all Adobe programs for a reasonable monthly fee. Another big player in the publishing world is QuarkXPress. With a more utilitarian interface than InDesign, Quark is perhaps easier to learn. It is expensive for business licenses, but a copy for educational or nonprofit purposes costs just a few hundred dollars.
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Amy Stanbrough is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in 'Bust,' 'Woman's World,' 'Southern Exposure' and many other publications. Stanbrough holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from George Mason University.
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A lot of people ask me whether it is possible to get Microsoft publisher for the Macintosh computer, or whether there is an equivalent piece of software. Unfortunately the answer is no, there has never been a Macintosh version of publisher, and this article tries to explain why, and what the options are.
Microsoft Publisher is a very popular piece of software for Windows computers. It fills of a gap on Windows computers because Microsoft Office does not have the capability to do page layout like Apple Pages does. As you think about more alternatives to Microsoft publisher for a window computer, Adobe PageMaker and InDesign are too expensive and complex for most everyday users. So when people want to do a simple newsletter, but one that’s too complicated for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher fills the gap nicely. Microsoft Word documents tend to look pretty bland whereas publisher allows you to spruce them up a bit.
Microsoft publisher fills a gap on Windows computers that does not exist in OSX
Now let’s think about the Macintosh computer, there is no such gap. Apple Pages can do pretty much everything Publisher can do! So a Macintosh user has no need for Microsoft Publisher. Apple Pages can produce some quite spectacular documents very simply, and unless you are a professional publisher there’s really not the need to step up to PageMaker or InDesign. This does not really leave a market for Microsoft Publisher on the Macintosh computer, except for Macintosh users to be able to read a publisher document that was created on a PC! So while this would be a nice convenience for Macintosh users, I don’t imagine it is a large market for Microsoft Publisher.
Microsoft Word is a different story though. Microsoft Word was first released for Apple Computer back in 1984. Microsoft Word is a professional word-processing application that in many ways is superior to Apple pages, and was superior to Apple works and Claris Works. If you are writing large or complex documents there is and always has been a huge market for Microsoft Word on the Apple Computer.
If you are waiting for a version of Microsoft Publisher to appear for Macintosh computer, I would not be holding your breath.
If you want to access a Microsoft publisher document there are a couple of options.
The first one is to use Libre Office. Libre Office
The other option is to use one of these solutions I have described in this article. This will give you a PDF version of the Microsoft Publisher document that retains all its original formatting. You can’t really do anything with the PDF version unless you own Adobe Pagemaker, but you will be able to accurately view and print the Microsoft publisher document.
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Autosave, file recovery and finding old deleted files in Microsoft Word 2016 for OS XHow to improve the appearance of Microsoft Word 2016 on OS XHow to match the colours on your monitor to your printer.Gary Waresays:August 28, 2018 at 1:04 amFinally used boot camp to set up windows partition on MacBook to pretty much purely run Publisher.
Couldn’t believe I didn’t do it years ago.
Can move between one or the other in under a minute or so.
It’s more a utility of neither Publisher or Pages being able to be used on the other operating system that has been the issue for us. Our office runs windows, I use Mac.
Equivalence
Waynesays:August 30, 2018 at 4:43 pmThanks Gary – that’s a good solution if you are caught needing to use both.
ReplyKenMac Software Equivalent To Microsoft Publisher For Mac
says:April 4, 2019 at 7:17 pm
I’m sorry but I use Pages almost daily, and there is no comparison to what Publisher can do. I run bootcamp like Gary because I can never get documents that consistently look as good as they do on Publisher.
ReplyKeithsays:May 6, 2019 at 2:16 pmI have similar issues trying to open .pub files on LibreOffice. Supposedly you can simply open those files in that particular office suite, but it won’t populate the graphics. That just makes the whole process senseless without them. Anyone have an idea?
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