School and PTA newsletters made in Publisher

What school and PTA files usually look like

• Newsletters from the principal or the PTA: a masthead with the school logo, two or three columns of news, a calendar box, a lunch menu, photos from the last event.
• Flyers and posters for book fairs, bake sales, fun runs, open houses and fundraisers, often with big headline text, clip art and a tear-off strip.
• Forms: field trip permission slips, volunteer sign-up sheets, order forms with tables and lines to fill in.
• Programs for concerts, plays and graduation, often folded booklets.

Typical trouble spots are linked text columns (one story running across several columns), text wrapped around photos, tables and lines on forms, and fonts from older Office versions. PubRescue lays out linked columns the way Publisher did, keeps text wrapping around pictures, and uses metric-compatible fonts so line breaks stay put.

How to convert school newsletters and flyers

1. Collect the files from the shared drive, the office computer and the PTA's email or cloud folder. Keep the year folders.
2. Drop the folder or a ZIP on the box above. Single files work too.
3. Check the previews of every file, free. Click a thumbnail to see every page.
4. Download the PDF and Word file of each one. The first 3 PDFs and 1 Word file of each upload are free; a one-time plan from $9 unlocks the whole upload as one ZIP with your folders kept.

Reusing last year's flyer

A lot of school paperwork repeats every year: the fall festival flyer, the spring concert program, the supply list, the "welcome back" letter. Convert last year's version to Word, open it in Word, LibreOffice or Google Docs, and change the dates, times and names. The design stays exactly as it was, because the page itself is a background image and the text sits on top in editable text boxes.

Keep edits about the same length as the original text. A text box in the Word file doesn't spill over into the next column the way it did in Publisher, so a much longer paragraph needs trimming or a smaller font. If you're planning a bigger redesign, see Publisher alternatives for tools that suit schools and volunteers.

Sending newsletters home

Families read newsletters on phones. A PDF opens on any phone without an app, keeps the layout, and can be attached to an email, posted on the school website or shared in a parent app. If you'd rather show the front page as a picture in an email or social post, every file also has an image download; see PUB to JPG and PNG.

What to do with the school's archive

Old newsletters and yearbook-style programs are a record of the school: past staff, class photos, events, anniversaries. When a school changes computers or an office manager retires, .pub files are often the first things to become unreadable.

• Convert the whole archive to PDF and store it in a shared folder by school year. The ZIP you download keeps the folder structure you uploaded.
• Keep Word files for the templates you'll reuse: newsletter, letterhead, recurring flyers and forms.
• If you're an IT admin moving several schools, the Organization plan ($99, up to 5000 files per upload) comes with an invoice and a 30-day pass code for several uploads. See bulk conversion.

What to expect

• Fonts are replaced with metric-compatible substitutes, so lines break where they did; playful display fonts used on flyers may look different.
• The Word file looks like the original, with text in editable text boxes on top of a page background. It is not a reflowable document, and form lines and tables are part of the background.
• Very old files from Publisher 98 or 2000 are converted with lower accuracy. Check their previews.

Privacy for school files

Newsletters can include student names and photos. Files are used only to produce your downloads and are deleted automatically, free uploads after 24 hours and paid ones after 7 days. Each upload has its own random link. Details are in the privacy policy.