I have been using Publisher 2010 (Academic) for over 2 1/2 years with no problem and the 2003 version much longer.  Today, I went to open a Pub. document; instead of opening as it normally does, I got a dialog box saying I needed to activate the program.  On attempting this, it rejected the product key number stating it was invalid.  A different dialog box rejected the product ID number saying it had expired.  The same thing happens with each and every one of my Pub. documents that have been saved in "Documents".  Until this morning, everything has worked excellently  -  I have been able to edit, alter, and everything else I needed to with the Publisher program.  Does anyone have any idea what would be causing this situation.  By the way, I probably should tell you that I am not much of a computer person, so please try to avoid as much "technical" jargon as possible.  Thank you.

Hi,

Did you installed September 2013 Update recently?

If so, please follow the steps below to troubleshoot the issue:

1. Please go to Control Panel > Default Programs > Associate a file type or protocol with a program and reset the Publisher related extension to Microsoft Publisher. Then test issue again.

2. Try to run a repair of your Office installation to check the result.

Go to Control Panel > Programs and Features > right-click your Office program and click Change > choose Repair

3. Temporarily uninstall the recent update and check if the issue persists.

For more information, please refer:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2013/09/18/office-2010-starter-edition-file-type-associations-missing-after-september-2013-update.aspx

Hope this helps.

Regards.

Steve Fan
TechNet Community Support