Switch conversion direction: From LaTeX to PC
last update: Nov 12, 1998
The url of this page is http://www.kfa-juelich.de/isr/1/texconv/pctotex.html
Although this page resides on the official WWW server of Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, it is NOT officially supported by Forschungszentrum Jülich but results from my personal work.
I maintain these pages because I need converters between LaTeX and PC Textprocessors for my work and I want to share the information with others who need it. They grew significantly and, because I maintain them in my spare time, I can no longer maintain a text version and a German version in parallel, as the previous version had.
This list is as good or as bad as its support, and I need YOUR support to update and supplement this list. Please supplement if you know more and/or better ones. There are some more converters on the CTAN sites, but the following seem to be most promising for conversion to and from the currect versions of wordprocessors.
Neither correctness nor completeness is guaranteed.
All opinions mentioned (if any) are my own, not my employer's. Please send
corrections, enhancements and supplements to the following address:
W.Hennings@fz-juelich.de
Note that this FAQ list contains information about converters ONLY between LaTeX and PC word processors. Converters to and from other formats may have own FAQ lists - e.g. see the link for converters to and from HTML.
One advantage of LaTeX is that it forces to structure a document, whereas wordprocessors like Word/WordPerfect allow unstructured documents. It is hardly possible to automatically structure a document where there was no structure before.
However it is nevertheless possible to write a structured document with a wordprocessor by consistently using styles. Therefore, wordprocessor documents using styles can be converted to LaTeX e.g. by a macro written for the specific wordprocessor.
To illustrate these, let me restrict it to the Microsoft Word case:
In the previous version I dared to recommend using HTML as an intermediate format. However I got some comments saying that they had much better experience with <insert your favorite converter here>.
Moreover, the <favorite converter> of someone else didn't work at all for me, and the other way around.
So I am sorry not to have ANY recommendation now. There is no converter satisfying everyone's needs, nor working under all conditions. I am sorry again you have to try for your own.
winw2ltx: A set of macros for WinWord 2, now also available for WinWord 6 and 7 (95)
MathType: PC equation editor with export to LaTeX. MathType home page (USA)
LAOLA: LAOLA can read Word6- and Word7-documents under Unix and extract the text. LAOLA homepage (DE site)
word2x: Converts MS Word for Windows 6.0 documents (binary!) to LaTeX or plain text. word2x homepage (UK site)
MSWordView is a program that can understand the microsofts word 8 binary file format (office97), it currently converts word into html, which can then be read with a browser. MSWordView homepage (Ireland site)
To use an RTF converter, the wordprocessor document must first be "saved as" Rich Text Format. However each new version of MS Word came with a new level of the RTF language. Most of the available converters cannot understand the current RTF version
rtflatex understands only older RTF levels
rtf2latex understands only older RTF levels. RTF utilities homepage (USA site)
w2latex understands only older RTF levels
Scientific Word: Win95 based TeX/LaTeX system with graphical editor and rtf import capability including MS's equation editor equations. Understands rtf level up to WinWord 7(95). Scientific Word home page (USA)
Apart from Scientific Word/Workplace which come with an equation-capable rtf-to-LaTeX converter, here are the only available converters which can handle equations. The problem for me is that Microsoft WinWord 7 (95) (I don't have other versions available) does a bad job converting equations to WordPerfect. In fact, only very simple constructs are (partially) converted, and more complex equations are not converted at all.
WP2LaTeX: converts WordPerfect 4.x / 5.x / 6.x, including equations, to LaTeX. homepage
TeXPerfect: WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS -> LaTeX Translater
Publishing Companion: Word/WordPerfect -> LaTeX converter, equation editor. KTALK's home page (USA)
There are free HTML converters for Word 6 and 7 for Windows available from
Microsoft:
Download... IA
for Word 6 /
IA for Word
7 / IA for
Word for Mac
Word 97 contains it by default, but in contrary to the previous versions it
only recognizes heading styles if they are first converted into the
corresponding html styles.
WordPerfect 7 and up have an integrated InternetPublisher.
For WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows, the InternetPublisher is available separately:
Download...
InternetPublisher
for WPWin 6.1
There also is a tool for Unix which is intended to convert word6, word7(95) and word8(97) binary files to html. See http://www.su.shuttle.de/turbo/word2html.c.gz
Because HTML is a structured format, the conversion between HTML and LaTeX is rather straightforward. However there remain the limitations of HTML compared to LaTeX, i.e. there are many elements in LaTeX which can not (yet?) be represented in HTML.
See www.w3.org for a list of converters between word processors and HTML . Or see Liste von Konvertern zwischen HTML und LaTeX (auf Deutsch).
Some converters are available from
CTAN
("Comprehensive TeX Archive Network"), e.g. in .../support/latex2html
and .../support/html2latex.
(The ... stands for a host specific base directory, which often is either
"/pub/tex" or "/tex-archive")
html2latex (local): Description of
HTML-to-LaTeX converter
html2latex (USA
site)
htmltools (NL site): Another HTML-to-LaTeX converter. The source is no longer downloadable from there, maybe because the author is no longer employed there. To preserve the access for the public, I put the whole stuff here (local)
Although I got an e-mail telling about ongoing work to use SGML as intermediate format for several conversions, it seems not to be ready-to-use at present.
FrameMaker Utilities (UK site): Contains converters for both directions (LaTeX <-> FrameMaker) as well as templates which make conversion from Framemaker to LaTeX more easy
NB4LATEX: converts files from NotaBene4 (including ancient Greek and all the symbols of logic) to LaTeX2e format. homepage
Excel-macro to convert Excel to Latex: http://www.jam-software.com/software.html
The generated LaTeX code uses the tabular environment: http://www.hsh.no/~ag/tabular/
DANTE's LaTeX-PC-Konverter-Liste (auf Deutsch)
Der deutsche CTAN Server (The German CTAN server)
Deutscher CTAN Server, freie Konverter