My friend has office 2003 and RECENTLY did a clean install and thats when he found out he had misplaced one of the disks.... Publisher... I'm a freeware/open source maniack so he called me... I However dont know what it is, how its used, or why. So it not any easy search for me...

it needs to be compadable with the existing .pub FILES and as much identical as possible to the inferior microsoft... in my opinion he only NEEDS something thats compatible with .pub so if he dont LIKE that I'm sure micosoft wouldn't mind takeing him again....

I sudgested Open Office but I dont know if this is even close.... he is makeing invoices, I missed out on secretary school so this is a little over my head....He could use Excel for invoices.  See: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=invoices+with+Excel&btnG=Google+Search.  I have Office 2003 with Publisher and using Publisher for invoices does not make much sense to me.  Publisher has templates for many things but invoice is not one of them.  One of the Excel templates is really a better choice.I did find these, but dont know if they are simalar to publisher

http://www.sunncity.com/superinvoice/

http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_8_78_14010.html

Using excell templates may be to complicated for his likeing... it does mean using excell part of office or is it stand alone?Excel is part of Office, along with Word, Outlook, Publisher, and, for Office Pro, Access (database).  A search in Excel's Help on invoice will yield numerous finds and links to templates to download.  This would be my choice, but I am an Excel user.  If he finds Excel too difficult, software like the ones in your links MIGHT do the job.  Either way, he may need to spend some time learning to use the software.  

You mentioned compatibility with .pub files.  Publisher is the only PROGRAM that uses that type of file.