Where to get Microsoft Publisher?

[Acanthus]

We have a pc at home that the kids use for homework and they keep needing to use Publisher. We have Office 2007 which I got on CD from software4students but it came without Publisher and I'm struggling to find Publisher on its own without paying an arm and a leg for it. I have a feeling I'm missing something. Can anyone help?

Microsoft made the decision to hold Publisher back from some of the lower level versions of Word, in particular Home & Student which I'm guessing that you've got.

However I'd question why you really "need" it. You can do an awful lot of layout using PowerPoint. Or there are numerous free Office like alternatives out there that you can get without paying a "tax" to Microsoft.

Schools really should be encouraging this, why they so often seem to do nothing but push parents into paying unnecessary money to Microsoft rather than using the plentiful and very good free alternatives is completely beyond me.

I can't remember now but I thought Publisher came as standard as part of MS Office 2007 Professional which you could buy from Software4students.

Anyway, looking at their website it's £38 for MS Office 2010 Professional Plus which definitely includes Publisher.

So it really all comes down to if you can bear to part with £38 for MS Publisher for your children's homework. Given you have version 2007, there's little else in it. Personally I'd save the £38 but that's just me.

Yes I'm sure I will have one of the lower level versions as you say, it was pretty cheap. The problem is that DS starts his work in school on Publisher and then wants to bring it home on a memory stick to amend/finish, or to print in colour, as he can only print in black and White at school. Maybe there is a publisher reader/viewer software that would enable him to print, even though he couldn't alter his work? I seem to remember one for excel once, in the dim and distant past.

you can get it with software4students just upgrade

Can he work on it at school and then save it as a PowerPoint file to bring home (which I think you can do in publisher).

Thanks for those suggestions, I'll look into them both.

Are you sure you haven't got it? For some time now, software4students have only supplied the full Professional Plus version of Office (2007 and 2010). Perhaps you disabled it on installation? If you can't find the disk, you can log in to the software4students site and it will tell you what you bought. If it was Professional Plus you can download the installation file and add Publisher (and the other goodies you are missing out on).

If it wasn't, £38 for a full Office 2010 is the way to go - moving data backwards and forwards between Publisher and Powerpoint is not really an option, it would be like doing a painting at school and taking a photograph of it so you can work on it at home.

Thanks mr A.

Right. CD is labelled Microsoft Office Standard 2007

Looking at what is on it, I have:

office.en-us, outlook.en-us, proofing.en-us,standardr.WW, word.en-us, excel.en-us, office64.en-us, powerpoint.en-us, rosebud.en-us, updates, catalog, autorun, readme and setup.

So I definitely don't have powerpoint.

powerpoint PUBLISHER

That's a shame, you must have bought it before Microsoft upgraded their UK academic license policy which was a couple of years ago I think. £38 for Office 2010 Professional Plus is the most viable solution then I think.