Publisher to Indesign Converter

Being in the Pre-Press industry for a while I have faced my fair share of Microsoft Publisher files and the format seems to be gaining popularity as everyone with a PC at home is a potential graphic designer.

For a busy design house or prepress studio, Publisher is also a damn pain to work with and manipulate - especially using an Adobe work flow.  The easiest lossless method I have found when working with Publisher files is to convert it to a pdf - Open and edit the pdf in Adobe Illustrator and then finally bring this Pdf into Indesign for general page manipulation.  You can cut and paste elements between Indesign and Illustrator to your hearts content.

It works but it isn't a great solution - and when you are dealing with a constant barrage of publisher files it can get annoying fast.

One solution is to use PUB2ID and this little plugin is a lifesaver! :

Features

• Preserves intellectual property investment
• Enables easy data migration
• Eliminates time re-creating content
• Reduces costs re-creating content
• Freedom to choose your authoring system
• Supports Adobe InDesign CS3 & CS4
• Converts MS Publisher 2002 - 2007
• Simple to install
• Quick & easy to use
• Swift return on investment

PUB2ID (Microsoft Publisher to Adobe InDesign) is a plug-in for Adobe InDesign. It provides a quick, easy and affordable method for you to migrate all your Microsoft Publisher content into new Adobe InDesign documents. The conversion is enabled with a single click using the InDesign File->Open menu. No more re-creating documents from scratch; PUB2ID gives you a big head-start.

PUB2ID translates the intricate details of the content within the Microsoft Publisher document and instantly re-creates it within InDesign. Items converted from Publisher include: page size, positioning, color models, fonts and styles, text attributes and tables, layers, word wrap, linked text boxes as well as automatic extraction of images embedded in the Publisher file.

This plugin is available for both Mac and Windows platforms.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CmBAYOLe-4

The creators of this plugin, Markzware are the brains behind the extremely popular (and working)  Q2ID: Quark to Indesign plugin.