Microsoft Publisher is desktop publishing software from Microsoft. It is often considered an entry-level desktop publishing application, providing superior control over page elements to Microsoft Word but inferior to page layout programs such as Adobe Systems' InDesign or Quark, Inc.'s QuarkXPress (or even Adobe's obsolete PageMaker application).

Publisher has historically been less well-liked among high end commercial print shops, compared with other desktop publishing applications. It is a Windows-only program, in industries heavily based on Apple's Mac OS. Publisher's position as an entry-level application aggregates issues such as fonts unavailable and embedded objects not available on service providers' machines (in all fairness, Publisher does come with tools to pack related files into a self-expanding application). Many higher end features like transparency, object shadowing, slugs, text on paths, proper PDF output, etc. are simply not available. However, recent versions have greater capabilities concerning color separations and proper process coloring output.

Publisher is bundled with Microsoft Office 2003 Professional .