Latex2Word Conversion Tool

From LaTeX to Word: An Automated Conversion Tool

LaTeX is commonly used in academic and technical fields for document typesetting, especially for handling equations and cross-references. Since LaTeX files are plain text, they are easy to manage, migrate, and control via versioning systems. However, in day-to-day work, supervisors or colleagues who are unfamiliar with LaTeX often require Word documents for easier collaboration and review. To simplify this process, I developed a tool that automatically converts LaTeX documents into Word format.

Repository: Mingzefei/latex2word (github.com)

Motivation, Challenges, and Solutions

The motivation for this project was simple: I needed a tool to convert LaTeX documents into Word format. While strict formatting was not required, the result needed to be readable, with correctly imported images and cross-references. The Pandoc tool can convert LaTeX (.tex) files to .docx format, but the output is often rough, particularly when handling equation numbering, cross-references, and subfigures. This meant that every conversion required significant manual formatting and reference adjustments, which was inconvenient.

Handling Equations and Cross-References

Pandoc-Crossref, a third-party filter for Pandoc, handles cross-references well but does not support equation references (Equation numbering in MS Word · Issue). The key to solving this was using Lua filters, with inspiration from a script provided by Constantin Ahlmann-Eltze here, which effectively managed equation numbering and cross-referencing.

Handling Subfigures

Pandoc struggles with importing subfigures from LaTeX files. To address this, I converted the LaTeX subfigure code into a single large PNG image (by extracting multiple image-only LaTeX files and using LaTeX’s built-in convert and pdftocairo tools for compilation). I then replaced the original subfigure code with these images, allowing proper import of subfigures into the Word document.

Case Study

The compiled LaTeX file looks like this:

The converted Word document looks like this:

Appendix

Key Pandoc Command

pandoc texfile -o docxfile \
    --lua-filter resolve_equation_labels.lua \
    --filter pandoc-crossref \
    --reference-doc=temp.docx \
    --number-sections \
    -M autoEqnLabels \
    -M tableEqns \
    -M reference-section-title=Reference \
    --bibliography=ref.bib \
    --citeproc --csl ieee.csl

Explanation of key parameters:

1. --lua-filter resolve_equation_labels.lua processes equation numbering and cross-references, inspired by Constantin Ahlmann-Eltze’s script;
2. --filter pandoc-crossref handles non-equation cross-references;
3. --reference-doc=my_temp.docx generates a Word document based on the style defined in my_temp.docx. The Mingzefei/latex2word repository provides two templates: TIE-temp.docx, which is the TIE journal’s Word submission template (double-column), and my_temp.docx, which is a personal single-column template optimized for annotations;
4. --number-sections adds numbered headings to sections and subsections;
5. -M autoEqnLabels and -M tableEqns handle numbering for equations and tables;
6. -M reference-section-title=Reference adds a “Reference” title to the bibliography section;
7. --bibliography=my_ref.bib generates a bibliography from ref.bib;
8. --citeproc --csl ieee.csl ensures that the references are formatted according to the IEEE citation style.

References

1. Pandoc Official Documentation
2. Pandoc-Crossref Official Documentation
3. Latex to Word Conversion with Pandoc | const-ae

Postscript

There are two types of people in the world: those who use LaTeX and those who don’t. The latter often ask the former for Word documents. Thus, this one-line command was born:

pandoc input.tex -o output.docx\
  --filter pandoc-crossref \
  --reference-doc=my_temp.docx \
  --number-sections \
  -M autoEqnLabels -M tableEqns \
  -M reference-section-title=Reference \
  --bibliography=my_ref.bib \
  --citeproc --csl ieee.csl