About WannaPublish
Classic desktop publishing, built because one person’s mom still needed it.
WannaPublish is a desktop publishing program that runs in your browser and opens your Microsoft Publisher files. It exists because Microsoft retired Publisher — and because the people who had used it for decades deserved somewhere to go.
It started with a mom
WannaPublish began as a gift. Chris Durkin, the founder of WannaWare, built the first version for his mother, who had laid out newsletters, programmes and flyers in Microsoft Publisher for decades. It was the program she knew, and she was good at it.
Then Microsoft announced that Publisher was being retired — removed from Microsoft 365 in October 2026 — with no replacement and no real effort to help the people who had relied on it for so long. Their files, their templates and years of muscle memory were simply left behind.
Rather than tell his mom to learn something else, Chris decided to try to fix the problem: build a program that works the way Publisher works, opens the files she already has, and will keep running after Publisher is gone. What started as a fix for one person turned into WannaPublish, for everyone who was left in the same spot.
That origin still shapes every decision. If a feature would confuse someone who has used Publisher since the nineties, it does not ship. If a Publisher file opens looking wrong, that is a bug we want to hear about.
No AI in the program. Built entirely with AI.
Two things that are both true, and worth saying plainly.
Zero AI inside
WannaPublish is a classic desktop publishing program. There is no assistant, no generated text or pictures, no “smart” suggestions and nothing reading your publications. You place text boxes, pictures and shapes on a page by hand, exactly as you always did, and what you make is entirely yours.
100% AI-coded
The program itself was written entirely with AI coding tools — every line of it. A desktop publishing program of this size would very likely not have been possible for a small shop any other way. WannaWare is an AI coding shop, and we are full supporters of AI coding tools: they are how software like this gets built for the people who need it, at a price they can afford.
An honest note about the Publisher converter
The converter gets your publications close — usually very close — but it is not perfect, and we would rather tell you that here than have you find out on a deadline.
Publisher’s file format is closed. We read it with the open-source Publisher filter from LibreOffice and then rebuild the publication as real, editable text boxes, pictures and shapes. Two things can come out slightly different:
- Fonts. Microsoft’s fonts are not free to redistribute, so when a publication uses one we do not have, a close free look-alike stands in — Carlito for Calibri, Liberation for Arial and Times New Roman, Selawik for Segoe UI, and so on. Letters are a hair wider or narrower, so a line can break in a different place or a box can run a line long. Uploading the real font to your account from your own PC puts it right.
- Minor formatting. Tab stops, bullets, text wrapped around pictures and tightly fitted lines occasionally land a few points off. Everything is editable once it is open, so a nudge usually fixes it.
The import page lists every font it substituted so nothing is hidden. Publisher 2003 and newer files are supported; the older Publisher 98 and 2000 formats are not. If something opens looking wrong, send us the file — each one we see makes the converter better.
What’s in the box
The ribbon you know
Home, Insert, Page Design and View tabs, plus contextual tabs that appear for text boxes, pictures, shapes and tables — the way Publisher laid things out.
Text boxes and linked stories
Text flows from box to box and page to page. Columns, text fit, drop caps, tab stops, paragraph spacing, styles and a Format Painter that works.
Pictures, shapes, WordArt, tables
Crop and recolour pictures, wrap text around shapes, bend headlines into WordArt and lay out tables with banded rows.
Schemes and page parts
Colour schemes, font schemes, master pages, calendars, borders and accents, advertisements and your own saved building blocks.
Precision tools
Rulers, guides, a baseline grid, a measurement pane and exact page sizes in inches, centimetres, millimetres or pixels.
Print and export
Booklets, several pages per sheet, trim and bleed marks, print-ready PDF — or export pages as PDF, PNG or JPEG.
Templates to start from
Flyers, newsletters, brochures, menus, certificates, business cards and postcards that pick up your schemes and business details.
Nothing lost
Autosave while you work, publications kept in your account, and a Trash that holds deleted work for 30 days.
Open your Publisher files
Import .pub files from Publisher 2003 and newer and keep editing them here — see the honest note below about how close the conversion gets.
A look around
Taken from a publication made with the built-in Classic Newsletter template. Click any picture to enlarge it.
Who we are
WannaPublish is made and run by WannaWare, an AI coding shop founded by Chris Durkin in Spokane Valley, Washington. We build software for people the big companies have stopped building for — and we build it with the AI coding tools we believe in.
WannaPublish is $4.99 a month or $50 a year after a 14-day free trial, which keeps the servers running and the converter improving. Questions, a Publisher file that opened wrong, or just a hello — write to us.
- Based in
- Spokane Valley, Washington, USA
- Founder
- Chris Durkin
- Contact
- info@wannaware.com
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