How to Email a Church Bulletin Without Publisher

If your weekly bulletin still lives in Microsoft Publisher, emailing the .pub file is the fastest way to guarantee that most of the congregation cannot open it. Phones, Macs, Chromebooks, and many Windows PCs will not. After Publisher's retirement, that list gets longer. The document you mean to share is a PDF (and sometimes a link to that PDF on the church website).

This is a distribution guide: how to get Sunday's bulletin into inboxes in a form people can read. It is not a design tutorial. For tools to create the next issue, see creating church newsletters after Publisher.

Convert your Publisher files

Get editable PowerPoint files and PDFs from your .pub files.

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Send PDF, Not .pub

PDF is the attachment people can open in Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and on a phone without installing anything. It prints from that same file. Layout stays put, which is what you want for a bulletin.

Do not send:

.pub — requires Publisher
.pptx unless the recipient is an editor — PowerPoint is for the person who will change next week's hymns, not for the mailing list
A screenshot of one page — unreadable type, no page two, awkward to print

If someone on staff still needs to edit, send them the PowerPoint copy in a separate message, not in the congregational mailing.

How to Get a PDF From This Week's Publisher File

Publisher still installed. Open the bulletin, File → Save As or Export, choose PDF. Open the PDF yourself and glance at both sides before you attach it.

Publisher not installed. Convert the .pub file. Bulletin Rescue accepts Publisher files in the browser, shows a free watermarked preview of the first page, and—after a one-time $29 lifetime purchase—lets you download PDF and PowerPoint. Fonts and spacing can shift, so the preview is there to catch obvious problems. Save the PDF to your computer; uploads are deleted after 24 hours. The original .pub file is not modified.

LibreOffice Draw can export PDF from some Publisher files at no cost. Check the result. Complex bulletins often need cleanup. Details are in free vs paid Publisher converters.

Once you have a PDF, your email program does not need to know Publisher ever existed.

Keep the Attachment Small Enough to Arrive

Church bulletins pick up high-resolution photos over the years. A PDF that is several dozen megabytes will bounce from Gmail, Outlook.com, and many parish email hosts, or it will land in spam.

Practical habits:

Export a PDF meant for email, not an uncompressed press file, unless a printer asked for the latter
Compress photos in the working file if you still edit in Publisher or in PowerPoint
If the file is still large, put the PDF on the church website or a shared drive and email the link

A link also helps people on phones. Downloading a huge attachment on cellular data is a common reason members say they "never got the bulletin."

Write the Message as If the Attachment Might Fail

Some mail apps hide attachments. Some members open email only on a phone and never tap the paperclip. Put the essentials in the email body:

Date of the service
Link to the PDF if you have a website
The two or three announcements that cannot wait

The attached bulletin can carry the full layout. The body of the email is the backup copy of what matters this week.

Avoid language that implies the file is urgent because a "limited-time" tool is about to disappear. Send the PDF and, if you want, mention that future bulletins will also come as PDF because Publisher is retired.

Mailing Lists, Privacy, and BCC

Use the church's usual list tool if you have one (a parish admin system, Mailchimp, a Google Group). If you send from a personal inbox:

Put recipients in BCC so you do not expose everyone's address
Do not attach a membership directory in the same message as the bulletin
Remember that a bulletin PDF may include names, phone numbers, or photos of minors; treat it as a document with pastoral care implications, not as a public poster, unless your church already posts it openly

Uploaded conversion files should go only to services whose privacy terms you accept. Bulletin Rescue stores uploads privately and deletes them after 24 hours; read the privacy policy if that matters for your vestry or office policy.

Test on a Phone

Before the first PDF bulletin goes to the whole list, send it to yourself and open it on a phone. Check:

Type size for elderly members
Whether both pages of a folded bulletin are in the PDF
Whether the file name is recognizable (2026-11-09-bulletin.pdf rather than pub1.pdf)

If the PDF is a wide landscape spread of a folded sheet, some phones will show a tiny two-up page. In that case, consider exporting single pages, or posting a notice that the file is meant to be printed and folded. That is a design issue, not an email-client bug. Printing without Publisher covers the paper side.

A Simple Weekly Email Routine

Finish the bulletin in whatever tool you use now (converted PowerPoint, Canva, Slides, or Publisher if it still runs).
Export PDF.
Save it in a dated folder with the working file.
Upload that same PDF to the website if you keep an online copy.
Send the email with the PDF attached or linked.
Keep the .pub file only as archive if you still have one.

The congregation should never be asked to install Publisher to read the news. Editors can keep an editable file; readers get PDF.