In this post, I would like to share how to insert beautiful latex equations into Microsoft Office Word and PowerPoint.

I assume that one of the LaTeX distributions has been installed on your system. On Windows, either TeX Live or MiKTeX is fine.

Insert LaTeX equation in Word

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Free software

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There is a free plugin called texsword which can generate good quality LaTeX equations in Word.

How to install

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Download the package from sourceforge, extract it. You will see something like this,

For Office 2007 and later versions, copy the file texsword.dotm to the directory C:\Users\<USER_NAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP, <USER_NAME> represents your user name. In case that you can not locate this directory in this way, here is how you can find it in your computer:

• Click on the File ribbon (Office 2010) or Office button (Office 2007)
• Click Options
• Click Advanced
• Scroll down and find a button File Locations. Click on it.
• Find Startup folder in the list of the Word system folders.
• Remember where it is and close the Word. Copy the file.

If everything went well, upon next Word launch, you will see the TeXsword buttons in the Add-Ins ribbon.

How to use

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To insert equations, click the button with TeX label (see image above). There is also a shorcut to insert LaTeX equations: just press ALT+T.

For more usages, please consult the texword_readme.docx file bundled with the texsword.dotm. It has detailed instructions on how to use it.

Commercial and shareware

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There is a well-known software MathType which support LaTeX syntax. The only problem is that the license fee is too high for a student. I have found another software which is cheaper and can do the same thing. It is called AxMath and is developed by a Chinese company.

You can use the software free with limited features¹ or you can purchase a license for about $6.12 (￥39) to activate full feature.

After you have installed this software, a ribbon will appear in the Word menu.

You can insert inline, display and numbered equations. To change to the LaTeX input mode, click the button in the lower right of panel or press shortcut key Ctrl+Tab.

It support LaTeX command auto-completion once you start typing \, which is convenient.

After finishing equations, you can use Shift+Enter to render the equations.

Insert LaTeX equation in PowerPoint

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Install IguanaTex

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To type LaTeX in PowerPoint, you can use IguanaTex. Download it from here. Following instructions on the website (there is a installation part) and set up IguanaTex properly. Then a ribbon with name IguanaTeX will appear in PowerPoint,

How to use

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Type the LaTeX code just as you do in LaTeX,

Click the Generate button to generate LaTeX equations. If you want to update the equation, select the generated image, then click the Edit LaTeX display button under the IguanaTeX ribbon. After finishing editting, click the button Regenerate to regenerate the equation.

How use Chinese character inside math mode?

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By default the math mode in IguanTeX does not support Chinese character even if you have wrapped the characters with \text{} command.

To use Chinese, you have to do several things:

• Install GhostScript².
• Install Imagemagick.
• Use pdflatex instead of the default latex command.

You also need to the set the path of GhostScript and Imagemagick executable files correctly in the IguanaTex settings, as shown below

I test the following script and it works as expected:

\documentclass[UTF8]{ctexart}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\pagestyle{empty}

\begin{document}

$\text{比例} = \frac{\text{部分}}{\text{全部}}$

\end{document}