Microsoft Equation 3.0 For Mac

TechNote 103

Start quickly with the most recent versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive —combining the familiarity of Office and the unique Mac features you love. Work online or offline, on your own or with others in real time—whatever works for what you’re doing. TechNote 74 The information on this page applies to: MathType for Windows and MacEquation Editor (e.g., Microsoft Equation 3) for Windows and MacAll supported versions of Word for Windows and Mac Many users become concerned w.

Applicability

Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0 is no longer distributed with Microsoft Office. To continue editing and working with equations in Microsoft Office, get MathType now! MathType is the professional version of Equation Editor You can use MathType to edit and continue working with equations in all your documents. Insert an equation with Equation Editor On the Insert tab, in the Text group, click Object. In the Object dialog box, click the Create New tab. In the Object type box, click Microsoft Equation 3.0. In short, it offers (for free) exactly what Microsoft Office offers for a lot of money. These features are like a free Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint and the rest of the components of the Office suite. Plus, the files created using Microsoft Office can be open and edited using LibreOffice and vice versa.

Issue

After opening a previously saved Word file containing MathType equations, you discover all or some of the MathType objects have become non-editable 'pictures.' This is associated with the Auto-recovery function in Word. We know this is a Word bug because the issue is not limited to MathType, and happens with other 'embedded objects', such as Excel charts. Further, there is normally no way to return the equations to editable condition.

Symptoms

1. Attempting to edit an equation by double-clicking it will bring up the Picture Format tab instead of opening MathType.
2. Copying and pasting the equation into a MathType window results in the error 'The Clipboard contains no equation data'.
3. The 8 resizing handles around the equation have a different appearance:

Microsoft Equation 3.0 For Mac Download

Prevention

Microsoft recommends turning off Auto-recovery in Word. Note, however, this is a prevention step and will not repair equations that have already become non-editable pictures. The steps to disable Auto-recovery are different for each version of Word whether on the Macintosh or on the Windows platforms. Simply look for the 'Save' preferences for your version of Word and remove the check mark from 'Save Auto-recovery data every x minutes.'

Solutions

Microsoft Equation 3.0 For Mac Os

In many cases, the equations will display and print correctly. If you don't need to edit the equations, it is possible to simply leave them as they are. If you only need to edit a small number of equations, it may be more expedient to delete those equations and recreate them in MathType.

It's rare, but in some cases it may be possible to recover the equations by running the Convert Equations command within Word:

1. Open the document in Word and save it as an RTF (Rich text format) document.
2. From the MathType menu (or Tab), choose Convert Equations.
3. Choose the following settings in the Convert Equations dialog: under 'Equation Types to Convert', select (as a minimum) 'MathType or Equation Editor Equations' and 'Microsoft Word EQ Fields'. Set the Range to 'Whole Document'.
4. Under 'Convert equations to' select 'MathType equations (OLE objects)'.
5. Click the 'Convert' button to start the conversion process.
6. When the conversion is complete, a dialog will appear confirming the number of equations converted.
7. Save the document from Word as either a .doc or .docx file. (As it pertains to this issue, .doc seems to be more stable than .docx.)
8. The document and hopefully all equations might be editable now using any version of Word along with MathType. Note sometimes this conversion method cannot recover all equations in a document. If this is the case, equations will have to be re-created and there is nothing MathType can do to auto-recover them.

Getting This Problem Addressed by Microsoft

Issue

After opening a previously saved Word file containing MathType equations, you discover all or some of the MathType objects have become non-editable 'pictures.' This is associated with the Auto-recovery function in Word. We know this is a Word bug because the issue is not limited to MathType, and happens with other 'embedded objects', such as Excel charts. Further, there is normally no way to return the equations to editable condition.

Symptoms

1. Attempting to edit an equation by double-clicking it will bring up the Picture Format tab instead of opening MathType.
2. Copying and pasting the equation into a MathType window results in the error 'The Clipboard contains no equation data'.
3. The 8 resizing handles around the equation have a different appearance:

Microsoft Equation 3.0 For Mac Download

Prevention

Microsoft recommends turning off Auto-recovery in Word. Note, however, this is a prevention step and will not repair equations that have already become non-editable pictures. The steps to disable Auto-recovery are different for each version of Word whether on the Macintosh or on the Windows platforms. Simply look for the 'Save' preferences for your version of Word and remove the check mark from 'Save Auto-recovery data every x minutes.'

Solutions

Microsoft Equation 3.0 For Mac Os

In many cases, the equations will display and print correctly. If you don't need to edit the equations, it is possible to simply leave them as they are. If you only need to edit a small number of equations, it may be more expedient to delete those equations and recreate them in MathType.

It's rare, but in some cases it may be possible to recover the equations by running the Convert Equations command within Word:

1. Open the document in Word and save it as an RTF (Rich text format) document.
2. From the MathType menu (or Tab), choose Convert Equations.
3. Choose the following settings in the Convert Equations dialog: under 'Equation Types to Convert', select (as a minimum) 'MathType or Equation Editor Equations' and 'Microsoft Word EQ Fields'. Set the Range to 'Whole Document'.
4. Under 'Convert equations to' select 'MathType equations (OLE objects)'.
5. Click the 'Convert' button to start the conversion process.
6. When the conversion is complete, a dialog will appear confirming the number of equations converted.
7. Save the document from Word as either a .doc or .docx file. (As it pertains to this issue, .doc seems to be more stable than .docx.)
8. The document and hopefully all equations might be editable now using any version of Word along with MathType. Note sometimes this conversion method cannot recover all equations in a document. If this is the case, equations will have to be re-created and there is nothing MathType can do to auto-recover them.

Getting This Problem Addressed by Microsoft

It's important for Microsoft's customers to report their experience of this problem so Microsoft can appreciate how widespread it is and appreciate the need to devote their programming resources toward resolving it. We've reported the details of this issue, including sample documents to Microsoft, and we encourage all users who experience this problem to do the same.

You can report this to Microsoft by..

Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0 Download

Microsoft Equation 3.0 For Mac High Sierra

We hope this has been helpful. As always, please let us know if you have questions about this, or if you have additional techniques that work. We'd love to hear from you.