Chemical Formula (Word 2003 NL)

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Not sure to post this here or in the Software forum…

One of our users needs to put chemical “formulas” in Word documents. Not the H2O type of formula, but the graphical type, with elements like _/. I tried to find a Formula Editor within Word, but only found an Equasion Editor and that won’t do. Searched the Lounge but nothing suitable came up. Can anyone recommend some add-in that would do the trick without to much hassle?

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Do you mean structure formulas as in the image below? Although you could use Word’s drawing tools for that, dedicated software is probably much more convenient.

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Yes Hans, that’s what I mean: structure formulas. Thanks. I’ll try some Googling with that phrase. Hopefully that turns up some Word add-in.

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I doubt you’ll find a Word add-in. What your user needs is a structural formula editor that produces a graphic that can be copied and pasted into a Word document (or wherever you need it).

Elsevier MDL has a free structural formula editor Isis/Draw. You have to register before you can download it.

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Thanks Hans, I’ll pass that to the user.
I found another add-in, Meanders Annotation for Microsoft Office, claiming that it can do the trick.
I’ll ask our user to report back the results of his tests. But that can take a while.

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The annotation add-in looks interesting, but as far as I can see, it is primarily intended for freehand annotations.

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Yes, but a little downwards on the page it says (I made it bold) :

“Make difficult illustrations easy, such as musical symbols, engineering diagrams like molecular formula or structural formula in chemistry, complex mathematical notations or equations, electrical and electronic circuits and so on.”

So I’m curious what the user has to comment on this. I’ll post back if he gets back to me.

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Hi Jan,

Something like ChemDraw might be suitable – includes Office integration. There’s even a free trial version available. See http://www.cambridgesoft.com/software/details/?ds=1&dsv=5%5B/url%5D for more details.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Thanks macropod, I’ll pass it on.

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