converting latex to word

[Fox]

It's three days from the deadline and my master's thesis is 99% done.
It's about sixty pages with copious diagrams, one table, and many,
many equations. Today I got the most horrible bombshell imaginable
from my adviser:

"Looks great! Can you give it to me in Word format?"

I knew this was likely given that I'm in the engineering dept, not the
math or comp sci dept.

Obviously the short answer is NO. The slightly longer answer prepends
some words one probably shouldn't use around their thesis adviser.
Moving on from there, is there a remotely simple way to give him what
he wants? I have used the style file and guidelines given to me by the
grad school so I know that the LaTeX meets the requirements to get my
degree, but as his signature is needed on the front page I'm hoping to
make him happy without spending the next 72 hours redoing all sixty
pages from scratch.

I've tried latex2html in the past but there were no equations or
images that time, and I expect this will not be as pretty. The style
file makes some pretty particular formatting happen in there.

Possibly relevant background info: I'm using TeXShop on OS X and png
and jpg images. There are a few scattered color and typeface tags to
make some trademarks and URLs stand out. There is only one very simple
table.

[Bruno Lopes]

You should use LaTeX2RTF[1] and after that import the RTF file in Word (or in OpenOffice.org Writer[2], it is free and may save in Microsoft Word format *but* it may appear undesirable formatting errors).

Unfortunately, I am sure that some formating errors will appear and I really do not know if it can include all equations in a good way. An alternative is save them in a DVI file and include in the document one by one.

May the force be with you...

Bruno

[1] http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net
[2] http://www.openoffice.org

2009/12/9 Fox <stic...@gmail.com>

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Bruno Lopes Vieira

Linux User #324250
Curriculum Vitae: http://lattes.cnpq.br/7793315334001237
--
"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think."
(Niels Bohr)

[Gildas Cotomale]

> I've tried latex2html in the past but there were no equations or
> images that time, and I expect this will not be as pretty. The style
> file makes some pretty particular formatting happen in there.
>

you may still use latex2hml: your equations will be saved as images.
sure, the style is not that prettier but word can open it.

another alternative is latex2rtf: RTF is wordprocessor exchange format.
your equations will be saved as images included in the file,
the style won't be as good as your PDF output (i think it's due to RTF
format: it's not as rich as TeX !) but better than HTML and word can
open it.

[Bruno Lopes]

An inconvenient detail:   LaTeX2RTF is not able to handle with may packages.

2009/12/9 Gildas Cotomale <gildas....@gmail.com>

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[Anish Tondwalkar]

If you don't mind compiling to pdf first, there are a lot of tools to covert pdfs to docs. Unfortunately, most of these tools are online-only (the conversion is done on their servers), but this is fine if you don't mind the security problem in uploading your thesis.
--
Anish Tondwalkar

[Bruno Lopes]

I remeberd something that may be util: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport

With this extension OpenOffice.org Draw will be able to edit PDF files, so you can save them in other file types.

Bruno

2009/12/9 Anish Tondwalkar <twilig...@gmail.com>

[Baskar]

Hi,

Try Chkrii's tex2word its very simple and it will be very useful to you

http://www.word2tex.com/products/tex2word/dl/


Regards
Baskar K

[jon]

On Dec 9, 7:35 pm, Fox <sticky...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's three days from the deadline and my master's thesis is 99% done.
> It's about sixty pages with copious diagrams, one table, and many,
> many equations. Today I got the most horrible bombshell imaginable
> from my adviser:
>
> "Looks great! Can you give it to me in Word format?"

terrible news, indeed. (what does he need to do to it in word
format?)

anyway, two unmentioned options:

tex4ht: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~gurari/TeX4ht/
(by far the most robust and versatile converter, in my opinion; but i
find it works better without hyperref)

tth: http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/
(non-free in the strict sense, but 'free' to use: convert to html,
then to a word processor format)

i've never used either with tables and images. i've also used
latex2rtf, and it is ok, but tex4ht is much better (and [of course]
somewhat harder to use the first time).

cheers,
jon.

[Gildas Cotomale]

> I remeberd something that may be util:
> http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport
>

sounds good. but the page mentiones those as not supported:
* Proper paragraphs
* Processing layout of LaTeX PDF
* Conversion of tables
* Import of EPS graphics
:-/ however it's better than nothing and i'll give it a try.

[Gildas Cotomale]

>> It's three days from the deadline and my master's thesis is 99% done.
>> It's about sixty pages with copious diagrams, one table, and many,
>> many equations. Today I got the most horrible bombshell imaginable
>> from my adviser:
>>
>> "Looks great! Can you give it to me in Word format?"
>
> terrible news, indeed.  (what does he need to do to it in word
> format?)
>

change things here and around...
print less good looking copies...

[Zio_Pecos]

actually my advisor said..."if you use LaTeX I can't copy
anything..." :-X

:-X

I'm really interested in finding a good solution..

thanks a lot guys!

Zio_Pecos

[drorata]

One possible solution would be to explain that it is actually by far
much easier to share TeX documents... Just copy paste the content and
one is done.

I know that there's a method to export a beamer presentation to
powerpoint - by exporting each slide to jpg. Obviously this is NOT a
solution but if you export each page to a good resolution picture,
then you can create a word document consisting of pictures.

I know my ideas are bad - It's just that I experience the same issues
in my group...

[Gildas Cotomale]

> actually my advisor said..."if you use LaTeX I can't copy
> anything..." :-X
>

absolutely false: TeX format is a plain ASCII text format! your
document can be opended with any text-editor and copied easely.
when compiled to a PDF it's always possible to copy from there (plus
printing as well): all pdf-viewers have a text selection stuff + copy
to clipboard...
if he/she really need to reuse your work, PDF or RTF (and even Word
.doc) are not so good solutions because of the equations (made as
images included inside the file...) because of that, i found HTML
(another plain text format that can be opened from many
word-processors and text can be copied/dumped from any web-browser)
better because it give you source images (JPEG or PNG, not EPS or
other) to be easely reused elsewhere :) the cons is the print style :
cannot beat PDF (notice, images are not a true probleme when one have
special tools like the Adobe suite)

[gilberto]

>> It's three days from the deadline and my master's thesis is 99% done.
>> It's about sixty pages with copious diagrams, one table, and many,
>> many equations. Today I got the most horrible bombshell imaginable
>> from my adviser:
>> "Looks great! Can you give it to me in Word format?"

> terrible news, indeed. (what does he need to do to it in word
> format?)

I had a similar problem with my advisor, who wanted to make comments
inside the dissertation (and refused to use -- free -- software
capable of annotating PDFs).

First, I simply converted the PDF to RTF in my Mac Terminal (textutil -
convert rtf MyFile.pdf) and then edited as much ugly mess as I could
with NeoOffice, and included tables and such individually as images.

Later, I managed to use latex2rtf (even though my dissertation uses
accents and other stuff for which I used utf-8, only partially
supported by an unstable versioin of latex2rtf), which did a quite
decent job.

However, my advisor had to accept that the actual dissertation (with
its final format) would be in PDF, not in MSWord, which is anyway
unable to render anything close to the typesetting quality achieved by
LaTeX.

[Paul Johnson]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 1:40 PM, gilberto <ah.gil...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> It's three days from the deadline and my master's thesis is 99% done.
>>> It's about sixty pages with copious diagrams, one table, and many,
>>> many equations. Today I got the most horrible bombshell imaginable
>>> from my adviser:
>>> "Looks great! Can you give it to me in Word format?"
>> terrible news, indeed.  (what does he need to do to it in word
>> format?)
>

I've had great results with tex2word. I've not used it for 5 years,
but way pack then it was awesome. They have a free test version, then
ifyou like that, you buy. Not too expensive (compared to failing your
MA).

Has anybody tried the following? Output to pdf format. Then use the
professional Acrobat that can take in pdf and output Word.

It seems like the most obvious thing.

Suppose you have your EPS figures and such in separate files, another
option is to make an HTML file, gobble that into Word, and the
manually cut out the crappy converted images and use your EPS
originals in their place.

I agree with the other people who say you should educate your advisor
to either edit the laTeX in some text editor, or use some program like
"xournal" to make notes on top of your pdf file if that is the point.
But, I know you have to be realistic. Even though I'm in the learning
business, I find an absolutely stunning number of fellow learners
don't want to try anything new, even if it is better in quality.

--
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas

[tge...@gmail.com]

Hi,

Just typed up a manuscript and gave it to my Prof to look at and,
typically, asked for a Word copy... So depressing. I just sent him the
PDF with line numbers and asked him to give me line-by-line
commentary. I did get the test version of tex2word and it did a decent
conversion but didn't carry the references/cross-referencing across.
tth did a good job carrying across the references/cross-referencing
but not in the bbl style I had specified (easy to fix but
laborious...). Latex2RTF did the job, carrying across the references
(but the hyperlink option was left behind). From what I recall,
Latex2RTF didn't work so well for my 150 page thesis and I used tth
instead. Seems size matters when it comes to conversion.

> I agree with the other people who say you should educate your advisor
> to either edit the laTeX in some text editor, or use some program like

For my MSc the Prof who had introduced me to LaTeX merrily edited my
tex file while my other Prof bitched and moaned and would only accept
Word (and then bitched and moaned over the image layout etc...).

Hope you get your problem sorted.

[Zio_Pecos]

I guess everybody wants to know how to convert from LaTeX2Word because
we must deal with uneducated2latex advisors...

I tried the with Latex2RTF but it doesn't convert my docs...

I tried to convert the pdf2html but I think if the advisor needs to
correct something it's the same thing of giving him the tex...

I think this problem will never find a solution...LaTeX is the
opposite of Word...

p.s.
why my messages written with TB3 don't apper in the forum??

[kiwanuka]

On Dec 10, 12:35 am, Fox <sticky...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's three days from the deadline and my master's thesis is 99% done.
> It's about sixty pages with copious diagrams, one table, and many,
> many equations. Today I got the most horrible bombshell imaginable
> from my adviser:
>
> "Looks great! Can you give it to me in Word format?"
>

Lots of great solutions have been provided so not point repeating
them. How about just printing the pdf and giving him a paper copy!

Robert

[James M Brabson]

I recently had to convert a massive (~115,000 word) document from LaTeX
to MS Word. First, I tried every single PDF->Word converter I could
find. Next, I tried ever possible RTF permutation. Finally, I came
across the best solution. I'm sorry if it's already been mentioned, but
I didn't see it when I scanned through these e-mails.

Pick your poison:

1. If your formatting can stay EXACTLY the way it is (i.e. you will NOT
edit the document in MS Word format), then the best way is to find a
friend with the full version of Adobe Acrobat. (I'm sure your
department has a copy.) Then you compile using pdfLaTeX, open it in
Adobe Acrobat, and export as Word. This makes picture-perfect MS Word
documents that you will NOT have to waste time tweaking and fixing, the
only problem is that it hard-codes the page-shapes (if you try it,
you'll see what I mean). That means that the resulting MS Word
document, if modified, will keep its page breaks even if they no longer
make any sense.

2. If your formatting may change (i.e. you expect to edit the resulting
MS Word document), then you need to use Tex4ht. It's a command-line
program that compiles LaTeX into html. This is NOTHING like the
old-school htmllatex. This is an actually good program that does
amazing work. However, some mild formatting will be lost (section
heading fonts, manual page breaks, etc) when the document is opened in
MS Word, and you will need to spend an hour fixing them all.

I've tried every darned LaTeX->RTF converter I could find on the
internet, command-line and GUI, free and paid. I've tried every darned
PDF->RTF or PDF->Word converter I could find on the internet,
command-line and GUI, free and paid. After a full week wasted testing
all of these products, the above are the two best solutions that I've found.

Good Luck!
-James

Note- Your advisor is remembering old-school PDF documents from LaTeX.
Back in the nineties, when a document was written in LaTeX, the only way
to make it a PDF was to compile it into postscript, then convert the
postscript to PDF. This created a PDF that had no text in it ---
instead, each page was an image/screenshot of the Postscript page.
Therefore, the words in the resulting PDF's couldn't be
highlighted/copy/pasted. This is the new millennium, and these days we
use PDFLaTeX to compile our LaTeX source code. Nowadays the words in
the resulting PDF CAN BE highlighted/copy/pasted. Make sure your
professor knows this, I've found that many of them (even the computer
science profs) are still behind the times and have not yet learned the
joys of PDFLaTeX.

[López]

Hello.

I have used latex2rtf and it has worked correctly. I'm on Windows, but
I'm sure latex2rtf works also (and faster) in any linux machine.

Perhaps you are doing something wrong.

Cheers.

[kiwanuka]

On Dec 13, 2:44 pm, López <freddy.vat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I have used latex2rtf and it has worked correctly. I'm on Windows, but
> I'm sure latex2rtf works also (and faster) in any linux machine.
>

What tweaking is required for latex2rtf to work correctly? I tried it
with the results below. It seems to me it understand most of the
commands and doesn't recognise most of the packages either!

For reference, I'm working on:

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10

Robert
============latex2rtf==============
$ latex2rtf -b dphreferences.bib dph_report.tex
dph_report.tex:1 Package/option 'portrait' unknown.
dph_report.tex:1 Package/option 'openany' unknown.
dph_report.tex:1 Package/option 'fleqn' unknown.
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:1 Including file <dph_kiwanukastyles.tex>
(.tex appended)
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:21 Unknown command '\footskip'\pard\qj
\sl240\slmult1 \fi340 =6mm
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:24 Package/option 'titlesec' unknown.
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:30 Unknown command '\titlespacing'{\par
\pard\qj\sl240\slmult1 \sb240 \fi0 {\s3\ql\sb240\sa60\keepn\f13\b\fs32
0.1 }\par
}\pard\qj\sl240\slmult1 \sb60 \fi0 {0mm}{2mm}{2mm}
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:31 Unknown command '\titlespacing'{\par
\pard\qj\sl240\slmult1 \sb120 \fi0 {\s4\ql\sb240\sa60\keepn\f13\b\fs32
0.1.1 }\par
}\pard\qj\sl240\slmult1 \sb60 \fi0 {0mm}{1mm}{1mm}
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:32 Unknown command '\titlespacing'{\par
\pard\qj\sl240\slmult1 \sb120 \fi0 {\s5\ql\sb240\sa60\keepn\f13\b
\fs24 }\par
}\pard\qj\sl240\slmult1 \sb60 \fi0 {0mm}{1mm}{1mm}
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:35 Unknown command
'\renewcommand*'makechapterhead[1]{ {
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:37 No length of type z@ \par
{\fs24
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:38 Unknown command '\ifnum'}{\field{\*\fldinst
EQ \\O(\pard\ql\sl240\slmult1 \fi0 @, {\u807?})}{\fldrslt }}
secnumdepth >
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:38 Unknown command '\m'@ne \fs44 \b chapapp
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:39 Unknown command '\space'
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:40 Unknown command '\thechapter'\par

dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:43 Unknown command '\fi'
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:43 Unknown command '\interlinepenalty'\pard\ql
\sl240\slmult1 \fi0 M \fs44 \b #1\par
}}
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:54 Unknown command '\linespread'\pard\qj
\sl240\slmult1 \fi0 {1.5}
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:56 Package/option 'setspace' unknown.
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:59 Package/option 'mdwlist' unknown.
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:70 Incomplete support for package/option
'amsmath'
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:70 Package/option 'amsfonts' unknown.
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:70 Package/option 'xspace' unknown.
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:72 Unknown command '\abovedisplayskip'=0pt
plus 0pt minus 12pt
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:73 Unknown command
'\abovedisplayshortskip'=0pt plus 12pt
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:74 Unknown command '\belowdisplayskip'=0pt
plus 0pt minus 12pt
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:75 Unknown command
'\belowdisplayshortskip'=0pt plus 0pt minus 12pt
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:80 Package/option 'caption' unknown.
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:81 Unknown command
'\captionsetup'{margin=10pt,font=small,labelfont=bf}
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:87 Incomplete support for package/option
'verbatim'
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:91 Package/option 'wrapfig' unknown.
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:92 partial support for subfigure package
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:99 Incomplete support for package/option
'paralist'
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:101 Package/option 'multicol' unknown.
dph_kiwanukastyles.tex:112 Package/option 'appendix' unknown. \par

chapter1.tex:1 Including file <chapter1.tex> (.tex appended)
chapter1.tex:1 Unknown environment \begin{spacing} ... d{spacing}
chapter1.tex:19 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:19 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:19 Unknown command '\boldsymbol'
chapter1.tex:21 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:21 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:21 Unknown command '\text'
chapter1.tex:21 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:21 Unknown command '\text'
chapter1.tex:21 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:21 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:24 Unknown command '\boldsymbol'
chapter1.tex:24 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:26 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:71 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:71 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:71 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:71 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:74 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:74 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:74 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:90 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter1.tex:92 Unknown command '\text'
chapter2.tex:1 Including file <chapter2.tex> (.tex appended)
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
chapter2.tex:46 Unknown command '\pmb'
appendixa.tex:1 Including file <appendixa.tex> (.tex appended)
appendixa.tex:8 Error! Could not find <\end{appendices}>
$

[mike-g2]

I've been in similar situations and found that the GrindEq's plug in
for MS word works better than any other approach (http://grindeq.com/
index.php?p=home). The program (available at http://www.grindeq.com/)
only runs on windoze, and requires you to have MSWord. The program is
not free, but you can use it 10 times for free before having to
register it. It's not an open source-y solution, but my guess is that
it will save you lots of time and headaches in the long run.

On Dec 9, 7:35 pm, Fox <sticky...@gmail.com> wrote: