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You double-click the flyer you reuse every spring and Publisher refuses to open it. Nothing is corrupt and nothing needs repairing: since 1 October 2026, Microsoft 365 no longer opens or edits pub files at all, and a reinstall will not bring the app back. Your files are intact. What vanished is the only program that could edit them, which is the oldest problem in owning your own data, a file format that belongs to its maker.

Can you still use Microsoft Publisher after October 2026?

Only with a perpetual copy: Microsoft 365 subscribers lost Publisher on 1 October 2026, while Office 2021 and Office LTSC 2021 owners can keep installing and using it, though without security fixes after 13 October 2026.

The wording matters here. Microsoft's retirement notice, last updated on 6 October 2026, says subscribers "will no longer be able to open or edit Publisher files in Publisher". So the subscription you still pay for no longer reads documents you made with it. The same page says perpetual owners "will still be able to access and edit" their files, which turns a forgotten Office 2021 install into the most useful thing you own this month. An unpatched app is fine for one evening of Save As; it is a poor place to open strangers' attachments for years. That is the same bargain behind paying for Windows 10 extended security updates: old software keeps running, and the risk quietly moves to you.

Microsoft offers conversion, not continuity. Its guidance maps each Publisher project to Word or PowerPoint, and most of yours will land in Word. The EU is only now writing exit rights into law for switching cloud providers under the Data Act; desktop file formats have no such rule.

The search figure is the one to act on today. A forgotten file in an old OneDrive folder tends to surface after the last Office 2021 laptop has gone to a recycler. Run the .pub search and write down the count: that number, not the format, decides how you convert. Under a dozen, do them by hand this week. Into the hundreds, you need Microsoft's PowerShell script, which needs "a working and licensed version of Publisher installed", exactly what subscribers just lost.

How do you open PUB files without Publisher?

Open them in LibreOffice Draw, which imports Publisher documents and saves an editable OpenDocument copy, but first save a PDF from any surviving Publisher install, because that PDF is the most exact record you will get.

The Document Foundation, writing on 14 October 2026, calls Draw "the quickest way to open, view, edit and manage Publisher documents", through the same libmspub import library Scribus uses. Office Watch is blunter about the PDF: it is "the most faithful copy you'll ever get but it has very limited use for editing." Find your situation below and read across.

Read the table as an order of work, not a menu. The PDF comes first while a Publisher install still exists, and the editable copy comes second, from Draw or a rebuild. Draw is one-way, so the original stays as your master copy.

No single route keeps both the exact layout and the freedom to edit, so the PDF can never be your only copy. The tally is this article's own, derived from the sources quoted in this section.

Where conversions break, and how to catch it

Conversions usually break on fonts, linked text boxes and tables, so install the original fonts before opening anything, then compare every page that uses linked frames or tables against the PDF you saved first.

Office Watch puts it plainly: "Fonts are the most common problem." When a heading changes shape, the font is probably missing from your computer, not lost from the file. Install it and reopen. Its second warning matters more: "linked text boxes, tables and fancy effects are where conversions usually break", and a newsletter is mostly linked boxes. Word fares worse on those pages, since it "isn't a page layout tool".

Here is my grey area, and it is opinion rather than anyone's guidance. Microsoft says third-party conversion services "vary in quality and capabilities" and that it does not support them. It says nothing about privacy. I would not upload a membership list or a client invoice to any of them. Desktop software converts offline, the same logic as the EU right to repair rules: what you own should stay fixable by you.

• Test one harmless file before trusting a folder to any converter.
• Check page count and images against the PDF, not memory.
• Keep a PDF of Scribus work too: The Document Foundation notes Scribus "does not use a standard document format".

So the decision is not which app replaces Publisher; it is whether each file gets its PDF before the last install that can make one disappears. Do this weekend: run the .pub search, write down the count, save a PDF of each file from any Office 2021 copy you can borrow, then open the originals in LibreOffice Draw and keep all three versions in one folder.

The charging port quit first, then the screen lifted at one corner, and the shop's quote crept toward the price of a new phone. Before you accept that, know that the EU right to repair gives you a claim on the maker itself, for covered products, from 31 July 2026.

What does the EU right to repair oblige a maker to do?

A maker of a covered product must repair it within a reasonable time and for a reasonable price, so the duty is a fair-priced fix, not a free one. The European Commission's page on Directive (EU) 2024/1799 (read 16 October 2026) says the rules apply from 31 July 2026, which means the maker, not just the shop, is now someone you can ask.

Hardware, software or contract barriers to repair are prohibited unless justified by “legitimate and objective factors”, the Commission adds. A pairing lock can therefore be challenged, but “justified” is an escape hatch, so expect no automatic win. For a blunter approach, see how parts-pairing bans in US states set hard dates.

Which products? The full Annex II list is unverified here, because the EUR-Lex text would not load. Ireland's consumer regulator, the CCPC, published guidance on 7 September 2026 naming starter products that include mobile and cordless phones, tablets, e-bikes, e-scooters and external hard drives. A storage drive is in scope for repair, but repair is not data recovery, so keep a copy (that last point is my inference, not the rule). Check the current annex before relying on any list.

Four numbers decide whether you can plan a repair. The Commission sets the quote window on its standard form. A 2024 Council of the EU note (ST 6153/24, background only) describes that form as free. The CCPC counts the starting product types. Germany, per the Verbraucherzentrale consumer advice body, limits how long phone parts may take to arrive.

The delivery limit is the one to use as leverage. If a repairer quotes a screen part slower than Germany allows for phones, ask for the delivery date in writing, because a stalled part is how a quick fix turns into a replacement. Batteries run on their own clock under the separate EU rule on replaceable phone batteries.

Does repairing extend the warranty, and what does a quote cost?

Choosing repair over replacement adds an extra year of legal guarantee, and the quote itself depends on the maker, since the rules require a reasonable price rather than a fixed fee or free work. The Commission says “an extra year”. Verbraucherzentrale puts a number on it: Germany extends the limitation period once by 12 months, from two years to three, only for purchase contracts from 31 July 2026. Germany is the worked example, since each country transposes the directive its own way.

My own arithmetic, not a source's: a phone bought on 30 July 2026 and one bought a day later can differ by a full year of cover in Germany, because the cut-off falls on the purchase contract. Read the date on your receipt before you choose. Then set the quote against the price of a replacement, and treat repair as the winner only if it costs less.

Where can the repair duty still fail you?

The duty can still fail you in four ways: you pay a reasonable price, the quote form is optional, the German year skips earlier purchases, and no EU-wide repairer directory exists yet. On the last one, the Commission expects the European Repair Platform to be operational in January 2028, so for now you find a repairer yourself.

Then the grey area. In my view the “justified” carve-out is the weakest clause in the directive: a maker can dress almost any lock as security, and only a test case will settle it. That is opinion, not a finding.

One more limit. Readers in the UK or India are not covered by this directive, though India has its own yardstick in India's repairability index, which helps decide when repairing beats replacing. Before you hand anything over, watch for these:

• A diagnosis fee can be charged even if the repair never happens, so ask first.
• No standard form from the repairer? Get the price in writing anyway.
• A part promised later than the limit for your product is a flag.
• A drive repair is not data recovery.

This week, find the receipt, read its date, and email the maker (not only the shop) asking for a written repair quote on the standard form. Then decide: repair if the quote undercuts a replacement, because it also adds cover; replace if it does not, and keep the quote as proof of the price you were given.

The new screen works. That is the irritating part. The phone boots and responds, then a settings banner says the display cannot be verified as genuine, and a colour-tuning feature quietly switches off. Swap a battery and the health readout can go blank the same way. That is parts pairing, software that ties each component to one serial-numbered phone, and a parts pairing ban in three US states now limits it. Whether it limits it for your phone comes down to two dates on a receipt you may have thrown away.

What is parts pairing on a phone, and why do the dates matter?

Parts pairing is software that links a replacement screen or battery to one phone's serial number, and the dates matter because each state's protection only reaches devices built or first sold after a fixed cutoff.

Makers say pairing stops stolen parts circulating. Fair for a fingerprint sensor, or, well, any part that unlocks the phone. For a battery it is hard to defend: the result is a working part the phone treats as suspect, and a shop that cannot clear the warning without the maker's software. My view: the security argument has been stretched well past the parts it fits.

Oregon moved first. Oregon's SB 1596 was signed on 28 March 2024, and a 2024 Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren analysis found it was the first US law to ban parts pairing outright, for devices manufactured after 1 January 2025. That is a build date, so a phone made in late 2024 and bought new months later gets nothing from the pairing clause. Washington's HB 1483 and Colorado's HB24-1121 key on first sale instead. Compare India's 1-5 repairability index, which scores phones at sale, or the EU replaceable phone battery rule, which designs the problem out.

Four figures decide your leverage, from the Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren summary of Oregon's law and US PIRG's May 2024 guide to Colorado's (as of 2024):

Price parity is the figure people skim past, and the one that changes a repair quote. Colorado caps what a maker charges an independent shop for a part at what it charges its own authorized network. The gap between a mall kiosk and an official store becomes labour and margin, not a locked-up part.

Which states have a parts pairing ban, and from when?

Oregon has the only outright ban, for devices built after 1 January 2025, while Washington and Colorado restrict pairing under laws that took effect on 1 January 2026 for devices first sold after 1 July 2021.

Washington's law, KUOW reported on 27 May 2025, makes makers supply tools, parts and documentation to independent shops and bars parts that inhibit repairs. That report gives no separate pairing start date, so treat 1 January 2026 as the earliest it could bite.

Here is the arithmetic the laws leave to you. Oregon's cutoff is a build date, so as of October 2026 any phone more than about 21 months old sits outside its pairing ban, however recently you bought it. That is my reckoning from the statute date, not a published figure. Washington and Colorado offer a wider window but a softer promise.

Does my phone have to be made after 2025 to be covered?

Only in Oregon, and only for pairing: Oregon's ban needs a phone built after 1 January 2025, while its parts and manuals duty, and the Washington and Colorado laws, reach phones sold since July 2021.

Oregon also covers other electronics sold there since July 2015, which creates an odd split: an older laptop can be owed a manual while its parts stay paired. You can fix it. You may not get every feature back.

Colorado's breadth matters more than its pairing wording, and the usual advice to buy refurbished only from the maker is outdated there. But a repair is only as useful as its software support, a deadline none of these laws touch, as the Windows 10 extended security updates deadline shows. Exact figures are still being studied, but early indicators suggest the disputes that matter will be over software checks, because pairing is the clause each state worded differently.

• Game consoles, cable boxes, motor vehicles, boats, medical equipment and power-generation gear sit outside Colorado's law.
• A phone first sold in Washington before 1 July 2021 gets nothing from HB 1483.
• An Oregon phone built in 2024 gets parts and manuals, but no protection from pairing.
• Washington only largely outlaws pairing, so ask whether the part will raise a warning before you pay.

That settles the real decision: repair independently, or pay the maker's desk to make the warning go away. This week, find the box or receipt for the phone you plan to fix or buy used and check it against the two dates. If a covered device still throws a parts warning after a fair repair, file a complaint with your state attorney general.

The processor is the part that failed, except it never actually broke. Your desktop boots and runs exactly as it did the day you bought it, yet PC Health Check calls the chip unsupported and Windows 11 refuses to install. Until June, patches for it were due to stop in October 2026. Then the Windows 10 ESU extension changed the arithmetic. The PC gets another year. What that year costs you is the real question, and the answer is rarely money.

BleepingComputer reported on 25 June 2026 that Microsoft had quietly moved the consumer end date to 12 October 2027. No pop-up announced it, so don't wait for Windows to tell you.

Is Windows 10 ESU extended to 2027?

Yes, consumer Extended Security Updates for Windows 10 now run until 12 October 2027, one year past the original cut-off, and anyone already enrolled keeps receiving patches without signing up again or paying twice.

That second half matters most. BleepingComputer says existing enrollments carry over on their own, so if you signed up last year you have nothing to do.

Getting in is cheaper than the headline price suggests. Help Net Security's 26 June rundown lists three routes: switch on Windows Backup, redeem Microsoft Rewards points, or pay $30 plus tax for the year. Two cost nothing in cash. The catch is that each one requires an administrator Microsoft account, so the free year is paid for in synced settings and in the offline local account you may have kept on purpose. For most people that is a fair trade. If you have already weighed cloud storage against a local NAS, you know which side of that line you sit on.

A PC that still works should run as long as it can be kept safe, the logic behind a repair score that asks when repairing beats replacing. Four numbers decide it. The business price is BleepingComputer's, the Rewards threshold Help Net Security's; the countdown from 5 October 2026 and the price gap are this article's arithmetic.

The countdown is the one to act on. It is long enough to skip a panic purchase and wait for a sale, and short enough that a Windows 10 PC in late 2027 is a choice you made.

Side by side, the free and paid routes differ less than the price implies.

Windows 10 ESU extension: backup, points or pay?

Choose the free Windows Backup route if you are content to sync settings to Microsoft, use Rewards points if you have them banked, and pay only when you refuse cloud sync but accept a Microsoft account.

Points sit in the verdict row because, once redeemed, they act like the paid license without the charge.

Read down the right-hand column and the paid route buys one thing: not syncing your settings. It rescues no local account and unlocks no managed laptop. Both June reports say one license stretches across a household; the per-PC cost above is this article's division, not a quoted price.

The bigger slice cuts the other way: new apps and drivers will target Windows 11 first, so the extra year buys security, not parity.

Can I use Windows 10 ESU with a local account?

No, every enrollment route, including the paid license, requires signing in with an administrator Microsoft account, so a local-only Windows 10 setup has to convert before it can receive the extended patches.

Here the common advice goes wrong. Skeptics of the backup route are told to just pay, as if money bought back the local account. It doesn't. Help Net Security adds that child accounts are excluded, which catches the hand-me-down laptop a teenager uses.

The other wall is management. BleepingComputer lists PCs joined to Active Directory or Microsoft Entra, or enrolled in device management, as ineligible; merely Entra-registered PCs can enroll. A laptop bought from your employer may stay locked out until it is wiped and released. Reclaiming a machine from a system you do not control is a familiar fight; the EU's rules on what leaving a cloud provider costs show how far regulators think that freedom should go.

And ESU delivers security fixes only, under Microsoft's program terms: no new features, no technical support. Your PC stays safe online. It gets no newer, or, well, no faster either.

• Do not wait for a prompt: the enrollment option sits in Settings, under Windows Update.
• A PC on a child account cannot enroll until an adult admin account is added.
• Check Access work or school on any ex-work laptop first.

This week, open Windows Update on every Windows 10 PC in the house. If the enrollment link is there, take the backup route unless you have points banked, and pay only for a machine you refuse to sync. If the link is missing, fix whatever blocks it now, not in September 2027.

Related: what happens to your pub files now that Microsoft Publisher is retired

The battery-health screen says 79%. The rest of the phone is fine, but the cell no longer lasts past lunch, and it sits under glass held down by adhesive that only lets go to a heat pad and solvent. That is the job the EU set out to end. From 18 February 2027, its battery law says a phone sold there must carry a replaceable phone battery that the owner can pull with ordinary tools. Must, that is, unless the maker takes the exit written for durable cells.

Will phones have replaceable batteries in 2027?

Some will, and only in the EU: Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 requires phones sold there from 18 February 2027 to have batteries the owner can remove and replace, but long-lasting cells can qualify for an exemption.

The definition is the useful part. Article 11 of that regulation, adopted in July 2023, says removable means removable with commercially available tools. Specialised tools are allowed only if the maker supplies them free of charge, and proprietary tools, thermal energy and solvents are ruled out entirely. That is a list of what makes a DIY swap risky today, or nearly all of it, and a compliant design needs none of it.

The catch arrived through a different door. A TechRadar report from April 2026 found that batteries holding 80% capacity after 1,000 cycles are not covered by the removable-battery requirement, and Apple's own support documents rate the iPhone 15 and later at that level. That exit comes through the smartphone ecodesign rules, not the battery law itself. If you buy an iPhone, plan on a service counter, not a screwdriver.

We think the rule is still a real win, just a narrower one than the coverage suggests. It extends the thinking behind India's 1-5 repairability score for phones from a label into a legal duty,, much as the EU Data Act's cloud switching rules did for data. The European Commission's ecodesign rules, applying since 20 June 2025, supply three of the numbers below; the fourth is our arithmetic.

The parts window changes behaviour. It runs from the day a model leaves EU sale, not the day you bought it, so a battery failing in year five becomes a parts order, not an upgrade.

Who is exempt from the replaceable phone battery rule?

Phones whose battery keeps 80% of its capacity after 1,000 full charge cycles can skip user replacement, and devices designed for regular splashing or immersion may limit swaps to independent professionals instead of owners.

The table sets a swappable phone against an exempt one. The daily-use row is our own arithmetic: the exemption's cycle count divided by one full charge a day.

An exempt phone is a bet that you upgrade before the cell fades. Keep phones three years or longer and a swappable design wins; trade in every two and the glue costs you nothing.

Does the EU battery law apply to iPhone?

Yes, it covers every phone sold in the EU, iPhones included, but Apple's current durability rating puts its recent models on the exempt side of the line, so a screwdriver swap on a new iPhone looks unlikely.

Apple has not said which route it will take. The exemption does not remove the repair duty, though. The EU's Right to Repair Directive has applied since 31 July 2026, and the Commission says makers of covered products, mobile phones among them, must repair outside warranty for free or at a reasonable price, within a reasonable timeframe. A glued battery stays your maker's problem.

The water clause is the grey area worth watching. Article 11 lets devices designed for regular splashing or immersion restrict battery replacement to independent professionals. Most flagships carry a water-resistance rating, and in our view whether an ordinary sealed phone counts is where the next loophole lives. eSIM against the physical SIM showed the same trade of a removable part for convenience.

• A phone bought now is not covered.
• Outside the EU, a regional model may keep the glue.
• The rule sets how the cell comes out, not what it costs.
• Trust the cycle rating over a shelf tag saying "repairable".

Buying in the next few months? Ask one question: how many cycles to 80%? A rating of 1,000 or more means the phone is built to be exempt, so price in a service visit around year three. Write that number down before you pay.

Related: how a parts pairing ban in Oregon, Washington and Colorado decides which battery and screen swaps are protected

Related: what the EU right to repair makes a maker owe you

The export finished at two in the morning. The bill turned up three weeks later, and the line that stung was not storage or compute. It was the charge for moving your own files off the platform. That fee is what the EU Data Act cloud switching rules were built to abolish, and there is finally a date on it.

The date is 12 January 2027. From that day a provider covered by the Act cannot bill you for leaving, and the European Commission says so in its own Data Act explainer. Everything before that day sits in a halfway house where the charge is still legal, but only at cost, and only for costs the provider can actually point to.

Why does leaving a cloud provider still cost money?

Because the meter runs on data leaving the building rather than data sitting in it, storage looks cheap right up to the moment you try to move out, and the exit charge is the rent nobody quoted you. Providers price ingress at zero and egress by the gigabyte, which is a perfectly rational way to make a bucket sticky.

That asymmetry is the whole game. You are never charged to hand over your data, only to take it back, and the bill scales with how well the platform has served you. The bigger your archive grew, the more it costs to stop trusting the company that holds it. This is the same arithmetic that decides renting cloud storage against owning a NAS at home, except at company scale it arrives as one invoice.

The conventional advice, that you should architect for portability from day one, is mostly a way of spending money now to avoid spending it later. Sometimes that pays. Often the abstraction layer costs more than the exit fee ever would, and the cleaner move is to accept the lock-in and know the price of the door. Anyone who has tried to back up an iPhone straight to an external drive knows the shape of this problem already: the data is yours, the route out is the vendor's.

How much does it cost to move 2 TB out of AWS today?

EgressCost checked AWS list pricing for US East transfer to the internet in September 2026, and that rate card decides most of these arguments. It is the figure finance will see. Four numbers set the calculation.

Work the archive figure through yourself, because no invoice shows you the sum in advance: 2 TB is 2,048 GB, the first 100 of them ride free, and the remaining 1,948 at the first-tier rate land you just under the price of a mid-range phone. That is our arithmetic on a published rate, not a quoted number. The notice ceiling matters just as much, because it is the one clause a provider cannot draft around, and it means no exit conversation can legally be stretched past a quarter.

EU Data Act cloud switching: wait or move now?

Wait if the move can slip a quarter without costing you anything, and move now if a contract renewal or a price rise is already forcing the issue. The table below splits the two windows apart.

Two things change on that date and one thing does not, which is why a straight before-and-after reading is the only honest way to look at it. The switching mechanics below follow the Data Act as read by Pinsent Masons, and the prices are AWS's own.

Read the break-even row slowly, because you compute that one yourself. Divide your expected exit bill by what the old provider costs you each month, and you get the number of months of double-running that the wait can absorb before it stops paying. A shop paying $300 a month for a 10 TB estate can afford roughly three months of overlap. A shop paying $3,000 cannot afford one.

Does the EU Data Act apply to SaaS?

Yes, a SaaS subscription is in scope wherever it meets the Act's definition of a data processing service, which pulls your project tracker and your accounting tool into the same switching regime as a raw storage bucket. Greenberg Traurig set this out in September 2025.

That is the part most coverage misses, because the story gets written as a hyperscaler story. The small tools are where lock-in actually hurts, since a team of nine can leave a storage provider in an afternoon and still be trapped in a task tracker holding six years of comment history. On-premise systems and private cloud sit outside, along with the heavily individualised builds that were never really a product.

Friction points before you pull the plug

Plenty still bites after the free-exit date arrives, starting with the charges the law deliberately leaves standing, the export formats nobody will put in writing, and a transition clock your provider is allowed to stretch when the work is genuinely hard.

The exemption that will catch most teams is the multi-cloud one. If you keep both providers alive and shuttle data between them, that traffic is ordinary usage and it bills like ordinary usage, whatever the calendar says. Only the act of leaving goes free. Or rather, only the act of leaving completely. Plenty of architectures that call themselves portable are permanent two-provider setups the Act does nothing for.

The second trap is behavioural rather than legal. A rule landing on a date does not change a company's habits on that date, as India's crackdown on dark patterns at checkout showed at consumer scale. Expect the first quarter of the free-exit regime to be full of technically compliant friction, just as the lock-in trade-off between an eSIM and a physical SIM survived every rule written about number portability.

• A renewal that auto-extends before January quietly buys the provider another year of your data.
• Export formats that no rival can import satisfy the letter of a right and none of its purpose.
• Support you asked for during the move stays billable, so agree its scope before the work starts.
• A delay that arrives without notice is not a technical extension, it is a negotiating position.

Open last month's invoice this week and find the data transfer line. If it is small, or if your move is a clean break from a provider that already waived the fee, start now and stop paying to postpone a decision you have made. If it is large and nothing else is forcing your timing, put the migration in the January column, write the notice letter now, and let the deadline argue on your behalf.