Pardon me if no one has mentioned this before but why don't you tell your MS Publisher users to send you their files in .ps or .eps format? MS Publisher can do it i.e. "File -> Save As" (or it could the last time I looked). Most users don't know you can do that and when you tell them they're surprised and get the satisfaction that they've learn something.
There are plenty of postscript converters/viewers around (for free if you use Linux/FreeBSD). I don't know how good MS Publisher is at producing postscript files from complex layouts but I've had no problem with the .ps files user's have sent me.
