How to move a Publisher file into Canva

Can Canva open a .pub file?

No. Canva’s list of upload formats covers images, video, audio, fonts, PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Photoshop, Illustrator and Affinity files, among others. Microsoft Publisher isn’t on it, so dragging a .pub file into Canva won’t work.

One thing that trips people up: Canva does accept .afpub files. Those come from Affinity Publisher, a different program. Microsoft Publisher files end in plain .pub.

So every route into Canva has the same shape: .pub → PDF (or page images) → Canva. Since Microsoft retired Publisher in October 2026, the first step usually happens without Publisher.

Which file should you bring into Canva?

Most people want the first row. The steps for it are above, and the details are below.

Step 1: Turn the .pub file into a PDF

Free: LibreOffice Draw

Install LibreOffice (free for Windows, Mac and Linux), open the .pub file, and it opens in Draw. Check the pages, then choose File > Export as > Export as PDF. That one PDF is all Canva needs. Our LibreOffice guide covers the layout problems to look for before you export.

Our converter, with nothing to install

The converter on this site turns each .pub file into a PDF, PNG and JPG images of every page (150 dpi), an editable ODG file for LibreOffice Draw, and a text-only Word file. That covers all three rows of the table in one go.

You see a free, watermarked preview of every page for the first 10 files in a batch before you pay, and one clean file is free per email address. After that it’s a one-time payment: $5 for up to 10 files, $15 for up to 60, $29 for up to 300, or $59 for up to 2,000. Only files that convert count, there’s no account to create, and everything is deleted after 24 hours. See pricing, or start on the converter page to convert a .pub file to PDF.

If you still have Publisher

A one-time-purchase copy of Publisher (2016, 2019 or 2021), yours or a colleague’s, makes the most faithful PDF. Choose File > Save As, pick PDF, and save (Microsoft’s steps).

Step 2: Import the PDF into Canva

Drag the PDF onto the Canva homepage, or choose Upload > Upload files. You can also drop it straight into an open design. Canva’s PDF import help says it keeps the original layout as closely as it can. It also says what can go wrong:

• Fonts may change. Fonts Canva doesn’t support are replaced with similar ones. Select the text and pick a better match from the toolbar.
• Layouts may shift slightly. Expect to nudge a few boxes and pictures.
• Scanned PDFs come in as one flat image, so nothing on the page can be edited. A PDF made from the .pub file itself, by LibreOffice, Publisher or our converter, isn’t a scan, so this mostly matters for old paper copies you scanned.
• There are size limits: up to 500 pages, 300 MB, and 1,400 elements and images per PDF. Bigger or busier files may import incompletely.

Canva’s help pages don’t fully agree on how editable an imported PDF is. The import page says text and images may be separated into editable elements. The upload-formats page says PDF pages become images in a document. In our own test in November 2026, a four-page newsletter PDF made by our converter came in as an editable design: the headline and the paragraphs we checked were text boxes with their fonts kept, and the photo was a separate image you could move or replace. Other PDFs may import differently, so after importing, click a headline and a paragraph to check before you plan around it.

Using page images instead

A PNG or JPG of the page is the quickest route when you only need to change a date, a time or a line or two, for example on a recurring flyer.

1. Upload the image to Canva and add it to a design.
2. Right-click it and choose Set image as background (Canva’s steps).
3. Add new text boxes on top. To hide old words, put a plain shape over them in the background color.

The words baked into the picture can’t be edited, so this works best for small changes. For anything more, import the PDF. Our guide to converting Publisher pages to PNG or JPG covers the image route in more detail.

Turning a Publisher template into a Canva template

If you make the same bulletin, newsletter or flyer every week or month, convert the template once and reuse it, rather than importing every old issue.

1. Pick your cleanest issue. Convert it to PDF and import it into Canva.
2. Fix it once. Choose fonts you’ll keep, tidy the spacing, and clear out the text that changes each time.
3. Name it as the master. Something like “Weekly bulletin, master” makes it easy to find.
4. Copy it for each issue. In the editor, choose File > Make a copy (Canva’s steps). The copy opens in a new tab and the master stays untouched.

If the import needs too much fixing, start from one of Canva’s own templates instead. Keep the converted PDF open beside it as a guide, and paste your text across. Canva also imports Word files, so the text-only Word file from a conversion is another way to bring the words over. Church offices: our church bulletins guide links a free Canva bulletin template.

Keep your originals outside Canva

Your Canva designs live in your Canva account, not as files on your computer. Before or after you move to Canva, keep the original .pub files and a PDF of each one in a folder you control: the office computer, a shared drive or a backup. If you have years of files, our bulk conversion guide covers turning a whole archive into PDFs at once.

Related guides

• Microsoft Publisher alternatives, including how Canva compares
• How to get a Publisher file into Google Docs or Slides
• How to open a .pub file without Publisher
• Converting Publisher pages to PNG or JPG