Microsoft Home Publishing 2000

You might find it easier to become accustomed to the newest version of Publisher, that being Publisher 365. It will certainly look more familiar to you than other desktop publishing software.

P'365 is not sold as a standalone product - no part of Microsoft Office is sold as a stand-alone product any more. Instead, Microsoft Office follows a subscription model, which is becoming increasingly prevalent with software. For 7 bucks a month you'll get all of Microsoft Office, always updated to the latest version, plus a couple of inducements that Microsoft throws in: 1 terabyte of storage in OneDrive and 60 minutes monthly of Skype calling (that hardly anyone uses.) There's also a 30-day free trial.

Here's what Publisher 365 looks like - click on the image to get a larger view:

There is also totally free desktop publishing software- good stuff, too, like Apache OpenOffice - but you'll have a learning curve.

You do realize, I trust, that Microsoft doesn't support Publisher 2000 on Windows 10. The earliest version of Publisher that Microsoft supports on Windows 10 is Publisher 2010. May I please explain what that lack of support means?

When Microsoft - or any other software developer - stops supporting an earlier version of their software, it means that:

• the developer has not updated or otherwise modified that software to keep up with all the new technology and other changes in Windows; and
• the developer has not tested the software as-is to see if it will work properly with newer versions of Windows.

This means that Microsoft cannot help you if you run into trouble with Publisher 2000. It's not that Microsoft refuses to help you. Rather, the absence of testing means that Microsoft simply doesn't know what might go wrong when you try to use 20-year old software on Windows 10, and without knowing what could go wrong, there can be no authoritative solutions.

Let me talk about this from your point of view and then from Microsoft's point of view.

You have continued to successfully use Publisher 2000 until recently because you have been lucky. A software application doesn't suddenly stop working merely because the developer has stopped supporting it. It can keep on going for a very long time. But sooner or later, Windows changes enough that the old software can no longer continue to work with it - not without modifications, and unsupported software doesn't get modified.

Once this happens, since there are no official solutions, you are totally on your own to figure out what to do, if indeed anything can be done. Perhaps someone knows of a work-around that will keep your old software going a little while longer. But that's really just kicking the can down the road. It's time to accept that the old software needs to be replaced.

For Microsoft, it makes no economic sense to continue investing money to support a 20-year old program that hardly anyone still uses.

Nobody here knows who James is - there is likely more than one James posting here - and in any case it's against the privacy rules of the Community to publish or otherwise make known someone's email address.

Hi Bulldog,

Thank you very much for taking the time to give me such a well explained response. I really appreciate it. I rather thought this would be the case, but had hoped that, maybe, there was some whizz kid out there who might know how to work around it.

I am  rather old and not very tech proficient and have tried one of the more recent desk top publishing programs which, for me, did not work as well as the old 2000. I guess I am either going to have to wise up. or accept the inconvenience!. Thank you once again for your advice.Regards

Chris Rowe

Is it possible for James to contact me via my e mail address, as fixing this via phone from Uk to the USA is hardly a viable option