Need an Easy Equation Editor for Writing Papers? Look no Further!

[Jonathan Scott]

The equation editor in MS Word 2007 supports lots of stuff very similar to LaTeX, and I use it for quick notes and short papers (but I use MikTeX for bigger stuff). I did however have to set up keyboard macros to go into and out of equation mode as that was driving me mad. I personally use Ctrl-# to start equation mode and Ctrl-Shift-# to end (although I didn't find an "end equation mode" functions so I use a trick instead), where these keys are assigned to the following macros:

Sub InsertEquation()
WordBasic.EquationEdit
End Sub
Sub EndEquation()
Selection.TypeParagraph
Selection.TypeBackspace
End Sub

I should point out that the standard keyboard function for switching the equation editor on and off in Word 2007 (and switching to the appropriate ribbon at the same time) is Alt-= and I'm sure that would normally be fine. I don't know why I created macros; comments in my macros source say "turn on equation mode without switching ribbon" but I don't know why I wanted to do that. I'll try using Alt-= for a while and see if it comes to me!