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The only “tutorial” we provide for Equation Editor 3.0 is the Help file included with the application. We also have some “Equation Editor Tips & Tricks” which you can access on our web site at the link in my signature.

I know of a couple of web sites that have Equation Editor tips and/or tutorials: (These sites are not affiliated with Design Science, Inc.)

1. Indezine — Mostly related to using Equation Editor with PowerPoint.
2. University of Waterloo — Great tutorial! Includes video clips you can download if you want.
3. The Land-Grant Training Alliance — Also PowerPoint-related.
4. The Science Education Team at Los Alamos National Laboratory — For all you lurking WordPerfect users.

You can only do it in PowerPoint, not Word. If coloring the equation in PowerPoint, you must color the entire equation the same color (i.e., you can’t color part of it one color and another part of it a different color), and the color remains only when using the equation in PowerPoint (i.e., if you copy & paste it into Word, it loses the color). Equation Editor’s “big brother”, MathType, allows colored equations in all applications.

Well, I found my own solution, which I’ll post here in case anyone else has a similar problem. I don’t know how it got changed, but the fix was in a registry key. I had searched the registry before, but missed this one. The key to change is

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesActiveDesktopNoChangingWallPaper

If the value is 1, you can’t change wallpaper; if it’s 0, you can.

Wassim, you wrote:

I have to work with the EE a lot in one document and that makes it time consuming to have to do the above menu selections.

The toolbar button will, as you say, speed things up a bit. There’s also a shortcut key combination you can use: Ctrl+Alt+Q. When in Word, this key combination should open Equation Editor. If you have MathType installed, it will open MathType instead.

One other thing that makes MathType speedier than Equation Editor… When you finish an equation and close the EE window, EE dumps itself from memory and must be loaded into memory again for the next equation. This takes 2-3 seconds each time — perhaps longer on a slower machine. MT is memory-resident, so the first time you use it, it will take the same 2-3 seconds that EE did, but after that, it’s immediate.

can you tell me the URL for the Equation Editor Tips & Tricks?

Sure, but it’s just as easy to click on the link in my signature. The Tips and Tricks article is linked from our home page.

I’m a bit confused about exactly what Wassim was wanting with a “docked toolbar” in Equation Editor (EE).

Wassim, if what you want is for the EE toolbar to become part of the Word toolbar, that’s not possible. EE works as a separate application that inserts an equation object into a Word document with a process called Object Linking and Embedding (OLE).

If what you want is for the EE toolbar to be “docked” to the equation editing window, that is possible by converting EE to “separate window” operation. (The default is “in-place” operation, which is what Andrew was thinking of when he said “Click away from it – the toolbar will disappear.”)

We have a document called “Equation Editor Tips & Tricks” on our Web site. Tips & Tricks shows how to change EE to separate window operation, and it also shows how to put an EE icon onto your Word toolbar, thus obviating the time-consuming steps of Insert | Object | Microsoft Equation. This is what Sam was talking about when he mentioned MathType’s “dockable toolbar”. This toolbar docks onto Word’s toolbar, and is for opening MathType; it does not allow directly inserting symbols and equations. MT does have a toolbar that remains docked to the editing window, but like EE, does not have a toolbar for inserting symbols that docks to the Word toolbar.

There is a free 30-day full-featured evaluation version of MathType available at the link in my sig. If you choose not to buy it, it will remain usable beyond the evaluation period in a reduced-features mode, and will be able to edit all equations created during the evaluation period.

Michael, the problem isn’t necessarily related to what you’re inserting, but how much you’re inserting. Word isn’t well-equipped to handle large numbers of objects, and this particular quirk of Word’s is magnified as system resources dwindle.

Unfortunately I can’t offer you any help as far as recovering your existing document, but I do have a few suggestions to keep it from happening in the future (or at least to minimize its effects):

1. Save often, but do it manually. Ctrl+S is a quick & easy way to save the document.

2. Make sure “Allow fast saves” is unchecked. (Tools/Options/Save)

3. Create a shortcut in your Start/Programs/Startup folder that points to the Resource Meter. The Resource Meter is located in your Windows folder and is titled rsrcmtr.exe. When running, the Resource Meter will live in the System Tray at the lower right of your screen, and will give you a graphic picture of your current system resources. If it ever gets down into the red, save your document, close everything, and re-boot.

Hope this has been helpful.

Whit you asked, “Any idea where I can turn this feature off completely?” What worked for me was to run the Office XP Setup again, select Add/Remove Features, and under Office Tools, the last item is “Support for Fast Searching.” Mark it as “Not Available.”

(Sorry to take so long to respond.)

These aren’t bad examples, but I’d like to point out a few errors

Hi,

I searched the forums for previous posts on this problem, but didn’t find anything, nor did I find anything on Woody’s Web site. My problem is excessive hard drive activity after a few minutes of no keyboard or mouse input. In this case, “excessive” means that the hard drive continues to chatter until I press a key or move the mouse. I let it run one night to see how long it would chatter, and I finally got tired of listening to it and shut it down after 3 hours.

Anxious to find the solution to the problem, I fired up my copy of TaskInfo2000 2.2 (which is available from <http://www.iarsn.com/index.html#/download.html>). This gem of a utility lets me see what apps are using my CPU time. I noticed that after the hard drive activity began, a new program appeared on the list — “mosearch.exe”. I assumed the title stood for “Microsoft Office Search,” so I ran the OXP setup program.

With Setup running, I clicked “Add or Remove Features,” and under “Office Tools,” I found “Support for Fast Searching,” which was enabled to “Run from My Computer.” I changed the status to “Not Available,” and all my problems as described above stopped. Now, I have no idea if MOSEARCH has the same effect on all computers, or just some of them, but it definitely appears to me that something isn’t right.

BTW, my version of OXP is “Microsoft Office XP Professional with FrontPage,” version 10.2614.2625. This may even be fixed in a later version of OXP, but I thought I’d make the post in case anyone else has had this problem.

Thanks for the info Tom. I never found much use for Find Fast either, but didn’t realize it would cause this kind of problem. As to the shortcut bar… well, MS didn’t ask you and me, did they? (I don’t like it either.)

Hi George,

When you try to insert an equation, what are the steps you’re going through to open Equation Editor? I think we can work through this, but I need more information.

By going to TOOLS/CUSTOMIZE, you can put an icon on your toolbar to insert an equation, but there’s no way to put the Equation Editor menus or toolbar icons onto Word’s toolbar.