Microsoft equation editor documentation

Question

I am using the inbuilt equation editor in word and powerpoint 2013. My question is: where is there documentation of the features? There is nothing substantial in the inbuilt help, nor on Microsoft's website that I can find.

For instance, I've worked out by trial and error and browsing answers on this site that certain latex style operations will work. For example \sum + space gives the sumation sign. But is there an equivalent for matrices? (i.e something equivalent to \begin{pmatrix}... ? How would I know if there was? Has anyone compiled a list of latex operations which are recognised?

Answer 1

There is no proper documentation for this equations feature (which first appeared in Word 2007). I learned how to use it from Unicode Technical Note #28: Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics by Murray Sargent. This is a discussion paper, not documentation for Word, but it gives a lot of useful information.

The Word 2007/2010 Equation Editor, mentioned by DavidPostill, might be better. But it is about Word's native equations feature, not Equation Editor. As Microsoft puts it, "Equation Editor is no longer used in Word. Support for writing and changing equations is built-in."

Answer 2

Microsoft has ceased providing documentations for its products. In the latest version of Office, pressing the Help button simply invokes the web browser to search for your topic via Bing.

The best I could find for you is this: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Write-insert-or-change-an-equation-1D01CABC-CEB1-458D-BC70-7F9737722702