Microsoft Publisher is reaching end of life, and our organization uses Microsoft 365 along with Office 2024 on some workstations. Do we need to uninstall Publisher ourselves, or will Microsoft remove it automatically? Are there any differences between Microsoft 365 installations and perpetual or LTSC versions of Office?
3 Answers
You probably don’t need to uninstall it manually. The main thing I’d do first is search for any remaining .pub files and identify documents that still matter. Convert important files to PDF or another supported format before Publisher becomes unavailable, since opening or editing them later may be difficult.
Microsoft 365 installations are expected to have Publisher removed through an update. Perpetual or LTSC versions generally won’t remove it automatically, but Publisher will no longer receive support or updates there. The exact behavior can depend on how Office is installed, especially if different licensing models are being mixed.
If Publisher stays installed on a perpetual Office workstation, it should continue to run for now, but it won’t receive future fixes or support. Leaving it installed isn’t usually a problem unless you have a policy requiring unsupported software to be removed.
That automatic removal applies to Microsoft 365 installations; it isn’t expected to work the same way for LTSC or other perpetual editions.