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Switch conversion direction: From LaTeX to PC
Author: Wilfried Hennings (texconvfaq "at" gmx.de), last
update (including subpages): Feb 9, 2009
The url of this page is
http://tug.org/utilities/texconv/pctotex.html
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. Because I maintain them in my spare time (uh, what is spare time?), I can not answer individual questions.
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 current 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 (auch in deutscher
Sprache) to the following address:
texconvfaq "at" gmx.de
Note that this FAQ list contains information about converters ONLY between PC word processors and LaTeX. Converters to and from other formats may have own FAQ lists – e.g. see the link for converters to and from HTML.
For the impatient, here is a table with overview of features of the most recent converters.
Before looking for a converter, stop and think about a principal question:
Do you want to convert the document structure,
i.e. a heading should remain a heading, a list should remain a list
etc., no matter how it will look like in the target format?
Or do you want to convert the appearance,
i.e. how it looks like, no matter how it is represented in the target
format?
Or do you want a mixture of both?
For using SGML as an intermediate format, you would have to specify the
translation rules yourself (as far as I understood). This makes sense,
and explains why different people have very different opinions about
which converter best fits their needs: They simply have different
demands and expectations on what should be converted and how.
So, not only practically there is no converter which is good for
everyone and every purpose, but this is even principally impossible
because there are no well-defined requirements which a converter should
meet.
So keep this in mind when looking through the following list of converters, try yourself and decide what you need.
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 a LaTeX with an equivalent (but not necessarily identical) structure.
The converters being most complete, undergoing further development and having support are:
rtf2latex2e - free standalone converter for Mac, PC, and Unix
word2tex - shareware, MS Word export filter for PC
word-to-latex - free MS Word export filter for PC
Writer2LaTeX - free export filter and standalone Open Office converter
WP2LaTeX - free standalone Word Perfect converter for PC
Publishing Companion - commercial Word Perfect converter for PC
winw2ltx: A set of macros, originally for WinWord 2, adapted to WinWord 6 and 7 (95) and now (Aug. 2008) to WinWord 97 (and up)
MathType: PC equation editor with export to LaTeX. MathType home page (external link)
Word-To-LaTeX:
This converter can save documents
from Word2002(XP) or later as LaTeX.
Besides Word2002(XP) or later it also needs MS .NET
Framework 1.1
(external link)
Converts:
For a complete list of features, visit its homepage (external link).
The package can be downloaded from the homepage
(external link)
or from CTAN in .../support/word-to-latex/
(The ... stands for a host specific base directory, which often is
either "/pub/tex" or "/tex-archive")
Word2TeX:
This converter can save documents
from Word6/Word7(=95) or later as LaTeX, including equation
editor (!)
objects and MathType objects.
Converts:
(*) restrictions will apply in unregistered Word2TeX: only 7 first equations will be translated, only 1 first table will be translated, only 1 first figure will be translated. Limited to 30 days of trial.
For a complete list of features, visit its homepage (external link).
This means the .doc format which is used by Word 95, 97, 2000, XP and 2003 and in which also Word 2007 can save its documents if you tell it to do so. The new XML format which is by default used by Word 2007 is (afaik) not yet supported.
The free (LGPL) office suite Open
Office (external link) can import Word format and export to
LaTeX format.
Open Office runs on MacOSX, several Linux/Unix's and also
Windows95/98/NT/XP/2003 and Vista and stores documents as XML.
My experience with OO 2.1 (I did not yet test the current version
OO3.0):
- Equations are converted!
- page size is not correctly set
- tables are not completely correct
- embedded landscape pages are converted to portrait so that wide
tables are not correctly shown
- pictures (embedded bitmaps) are not converted at all.
LAOLA: LAOLA can read Word6/Word7(=95) documents under Unix and extract the text. LAOLA homepage (external link)
word2x: Converts Word6/Word7(=95) documents to LaTeX or plain text. word2x homepage (external link)
antiword: A free MS Word reader for Linux, BeOS and RISC OS. It converts the binary files from Word 6, 7, 97 and 2000 to text and Postscript. See antiword homepage (external link). A user's comment: "It is still a bit incomplete, but I found it to be rather useful. Moreover, it is available for a wider-than-usual range of platforms."
wvWare is a library that can read the
Word6/Word7(=95), Word8(=97) and Word9(=2000) binary file format. See wvWare homepage
(external link).
It works under most Unix systems.
The wvWare library is used as import library in the wordprocessor
AbiWord (see below).
Its predecessor MSWordView could only read Word8(=97) and convert word
into html, which can then be read with a browser.
For the wvware library is an API "wsW2LTX" and a GUI shell "wsW2LTXGUI" (for MS Windows) available at http://www.winshell.de/modules/w2ltx_download/ (external link)
The free (GPL) wordprocessor AbiWord (external link) can import Word format (by using the aforementioned wvWare) and export to LaTeX format. AbiWord runs on BeOS, several Unix's and also Windows95/98/NT and stores documents as XML.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
rtf2latex2e new
(2000) version which also can read current rtf levels. Now also
converts equations.
download from
sourceforge (external link).
If you are interested in the history of this converter, see this page.
RTF2LaTeX, a patch for WP2LaTeX that allows it to convert also RTF documents. Experimental Release 0.4 (works, but it knows only a small group of commands). See its homepage (external link).
GNU
unRTF is a command-line program written in C which
converts documents in Rich Text Format (.rtf) to several formats
including LaTeX.
See its
homepage (external link).
The latest version is only available as source code.
A precompiled binary for Windows, however an older version, is
available from sourceforge
(external link).
Scientific Word:
Win95/98/2000/NT4 based
TeX/LaTeX system with graphical editor and rtf import capability
including MS's equation editor equations. The rtf import converter is
basically the same as the new rtf2latex2e.
Scientific Word home
page (external link)
Writer2LaTeX
(external link)
is a commandline utility
written in java. It converts OpenOffice.org/StarOffice Writer documents
into LaTeX2e.
New (Oct 16, 2006): Writer2LaTeX is now integrated as export filter in
OpenOffice >2.04.
Supported operating systems: All on which Java is supported.
Requires java runtime environment (JRE), version 1.4 or higher, to run
Writer2LaTeX. JRE is included in OpenOffice, and also can
be downloaded from java.sun.com
(external link) (scroll down to "Java Runtime
Environment (JRE)").
WP2LaTeX: converts WordPerfect 1.x / 2.x / 3.x / 4.x / 5.x / 6-8.x, including equations, to LaTeX. homepage (external link)
TeXPerfect: WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS -> LaTeX Translater
Publishing Companion: converts Word/WordPerfect, including equations, to LaTeX. Comes with own equation editor. KTALK's home page (external link)
There are free HTML converters for Word 6 and 7(95) for
Windows available from Microsoft:
Download... IA
for Word 6 (external link) /
IA
for Word 7 (95) (external link) / IA
for Word for Mac (external link)
Word 97 contains an html converter by default, but in contrary
to
the previous versions it only recognizes heading styles if they are
first converted into the corresponding html styles. Also, it sometimes
inserts unnecessary tags.
Word 2000 contains the html converter by default, but you
should not use this default: It actually creates sort of XML with many
Word-specific elements. Instead, for saving as "clean" html, download
and install the add-on
converter from Microsoft (external link).
For Word XP (2002) and above the "clean" html export
can be installed with Word's setup. It is recommended to "save
as" "html filtered". However this isn't "clean" enough, you should
manually edit the saved html before feeding it to the html-to-LaTeX
converter.
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 (external link)
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/michael/projekte/software/word2html.c.gz (external link)
Also see www.w3.org for a list of converters between word processors and HTML (external link).
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.
There are several HTML-to-LaTeX converters available. Without giving recommendations:
Frans Faase's html2tex (external link) (C source)
Peter Thatcher's html2latex at sourceforge.net (external link) (Perl script)
Jeffrey Schaefer's html2latex at www.geom.umn.edu (external link) (Perl script)
Michal Kebrt's htmltolatex at sourceforge.net (external link) (Java Program)
Some converters are available from
CTAN
(external link)
("Comprehensive TeX Archive Network"), e.g. in
.../support/html2latex. However, what you can find in CTAN under
.../support/html2latex/ is Nathan Torkington's converter of 1993 --
rather outdated.
(The ... stands for a host specific base directory, which often is
either "/pub/tex" or "/tex-archive")
There are ways to use SGML as intermediate format, and others have used it successfully. Having had a quick look at it, I found it rather complicated, especially it seems that you have to define the translation rules yourself. So I did not put more effort in trying to use it. If anyone can give me a ready-to-use cookbook solution, I will include it here.
Another intermediate format is TeXML. It was designed to make conversion to (La)TeX as easy as possible, especially XSLT-conversion from XML format. A converter from TeXML to (La)TeX is available, see http://getfo.sourceforge.net/texml/ (external link). However I yet don't know of any converter from a texprocessor format to TeXML.
Pmtolatex, a perl script to convert PageMaker files to LaTeX. See homepage (external link).
FrameMaker Utilities (external link): 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 for DOS (which is an old version for DOS) to LaTeX2e format. You find it on CTAN in directory .../systems/msdos/nb4latex
There are two converters on CTAN, but I don't know how good they are and whether they still work (they are DOS programs from 1993 and 1994). You find them on CTAN in directory .../support/chi2ltx/ and in directory .../support/chi2tex/
I've read of two possibilities to do that:
1. Excel2LaTeX: Excel-macro to convert Excel to LaTeX.
The generated LaTeX code uses the tabular environment.
On CTAN in .../support/excel2latex/ or here
2. Importing Excel file into Gnumeric (external link), then exporting to LaTeX. But I have no further info on the resulting LaTeX markup.
OO macro to convert from OO to LaTeX: http://calc2latex.sourceforge.net/ (external link).
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Copyright © 1998 ... 2009 Wilfried Hennings
You may copy and redistribute it under the following conditions:
Please also note the disclaimer.