MATH 24143 - Lab 1
Using Word’s Equation Editor
Purpose:
The purpose of this lab activity is to give you a brief exposure to the Equation Editor in Microsoft Word. This is a
tool you can use to produce mathematical symbols and formulas in Word documents. Since many of you intend to
head into technical fields, we think this skill will be useful to you. Also, later in the semester, you will be working
on a project, and we will expect you to be able to use the Equation Editor to create your project writeup.
Instructions:
We will walk you through producing the following formula (you don’t have to understand what the formula means,
although by now you should have some idea):
!
b
a
f (x) dx ≈
n
"
f (xi ) ∆x
i=1
After that, we will give you a typing assignment to turn in.
Begin by opening up Microsoft Word. Type in some meaningless introduction like, “Here is the formula I’m
supposed to type in:”. Then open the Equation Editor: go to the Insert menu and choose Object... (we’ll show you
a shortcut later). From the list of choices, pick “Microsoft Equation”. This opens up the following window (these
instructions are being produced on a Macintosh, so windows will look slightly different here than they will on your
screen):
1
Our formula starts with an integral sign
on it, and you get this popup menu:
#
, so we should too: press the button
with the integral sign
Since the integral you want has upper and lower bounds, choose the integral in the middle of the top row of the
popup menu (the one to its right would be OK too). Your equation editor window should now contain something
like this:
2
Each of the dotted boxes is something you need to fill in. Right now, the cursor is in the big box to the right of
the integral sign, so let’s do that first.
• Easy way: just type “f(x)dx”
• Slightly more complex way that will be more useful when you get to the sum: type in the “f”, then use the
parentheses button
in the equation editor to insert parentheses. Now type in the “x”, and either
use your mouse to click after the parenthesis, or just hit the Tab key. Now type the “dx”.
Hit the Tab key. This takes you to the box below the integral, where you want to type “a”. Hitting the Tab key
again takes you to the box above the integral for your “b”. Finally, Tabbing again moves the cursor after the “dx”
and you’re ready to start typing in the part after the integral.
To get the wavy equals sign ≈, find the appropriate Equation Editor button and use it.
Now start typing the sum by hitting the Sum button and using the version at the right hand end of the first row
of the popup menu. To type in “f (xi ) ∆x” you’ll want to do as follows:
• type the “f”
• use the parentheses button to insert parentheses and type “x”
• use the subscript button
type in the “i” and Tab twice.
and choose the middle item in the top row to insert a subscript box. Now
• to get the ∆, which is a capital Greek letter, you need to go to the appropriate button
“∆”. Then type in the “x”.
$
• use Tab to get to the boxes below and above the
to fill in the bounds on the sum.
, then choose
Now you’ve finished typing in the formula in the Equation Editor. Click on the “Close” button of the Equation
Editor window, and your formula is now inserted in your text. All done!!
Before you do the assignment:
It can be a pain to keep having to use the menu Insert/Object.../Microsoft Equation to open the Equation Editor.
Here’s a way to add a button to your toolbar so you can just click on the button instead of using the menu:
• go to the View menu and choose Toolbars→Customize.
• at the top of the resulting dialog box, click on the “Commands” button
• in the list of menus on the left, choose “Insert”
• in the list of items on the right, scroll down until near the bottom, where you should see “Equation Editor”
• click on that icon and drag it up to someplace in the toolbars at the top of the screen–wherever you want to
put it.
Now all you have to do is click on this icon to start the equation editor.
3
Assignment to turn in:
Type Go
example
theand
given
page 3.
to page 3853offrom
your text,
find Example
What we want you to do is copy the Solution for part (a). That
is, start typing with “Here we have f (x) . . .” and end with “e1+2i/n ”. In the example above, we’ve covered almost
everything you’ll need to do this except how to do limits: to get “ lim ”, use the subscript button
n→∞
then the item right in the middle of the resulting popup menu
4
.
again,