Alternative to MS equation

breadmonkey

I have a long Excel spreadsheet and I want to enter some equations to show the workings of my caculations. The thing is, it takes forever to do it using insert-->equation.

Does anyone know of a good (free!) program that will allow me to quickly write equations. i.e. I would type in something along the lines of M = a*b/sin(pi) and would get out

Hopefully I could then paste the output as an image into my spreadsheet.

Fremen

Almost everyone who writes serious mathematics uses Latex. This is a markup language designed specifically for typesetting equations. It's very useful once you've learned it, but it takes a bit of effort.

You could try Lyx, which is a kind of halfway house between microsoft equation and latex.

LeixlipRed

If you just want to paste the output as an image you could use Wolfram Alpha, it allows you to do that.

bnt

If you learn a little LaTeX, you don't even need a separate program. You can do it here on Boards: preview the post and save the image.
[PHP][latex]\displaystyle
M=\frac{a \; b}{sin \; \pi}[/latex][/PHP]
[latex]\displaystyle
M=\frac{a \; b}{sin \; \pi}[/latex]

If you need to insert more spaces between letters etc., use
\, small space
\: medium space
\; large space

Michael Collins

breadmonkey wrote: »

I have a long Excel spreadsheet and I want to enter some equations to show the workings of my caculations. The thing is, it takes forever to do it using insert-->equation.

Does anyone know of a good (free!) program that will allow me to quickly write equations. i.e. I would type in something along the lines of M = a*b/sin(pi) and would get out

Hopefully I could then paste the output as an image into my spreadsheet.

Not that this helps really, but Word 2007 or newer will respond to shortcuts like what you've written above. You could then copy this into Excel, not ideal by any means though.

It's really stupid the way Excel/PowerPoint 2007 don't allow the same equation entry as Word 2007. Usually this means you end up with some horrible looking pixelated equation.

breadmonkey

Thanks for the replies. I had initially hoped to write my dissertation in LaTeX but I'm so hilariously swamped that I don't have a nanosecond to spend learning the input. It's also unlikely that I'll be able to install it on the college computers.

LeixlipRed

Should already be installed! We have it here in Maynooth on some PCs and DCU had it everywhere iirc.

bnt

I'm using the combination of MikTeX Portable and LyX on a locked-down university computer, running from a portable disk. MiKTeX is the LaTeX environment, which includes a basic editor (TeXWorks), and you can use that directly if you're happy with LaTeX. It has a package manager so you can install various extras at any time e.g. I like the "mathpazo" package for documents with maths.

LyX, on the other hand, hides most of the complexity behind a more friendly editor: you can use it without any LaTeX knowledge, at least to begin with. I had to install LyX using a home computer, since it needs admin rights during installation, but it runs just fine without admin rights on the locked-down computer. It asks you where tex.exe is during installation, so you point it to the location under the MiKTeX installation (miktex\bin I think). Or you can let it install its own LaTeX environment during installation. (The portable disk has to have the same drive letter on both home and university systems.)