Converters from LaTeX to PC Textprocessors - Overview

Switch conversion direction: From PC to LaTeX

Author: Wilfried Hennings, Forschungszentrum (Research Center) Jülich GmbH
last update: Feb. 8, 2000
Although this page resides on the official WWW server of Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, it is NOT officially supported by Forschungszentrum Jülich but results from my personal work.
The url of this page is http://www.fz-juelich.de/isr/1/texconv/textopc.html
NOTE: The url will be changed rather soon but the new one is not yet decided.

I maintain these pages because I need converters between LaTeX and PC Textprocessors for my work and I want to share the information with others who need it. They grew significantly and, because I maintain them in my spare time, I can no longer maintain a text version and a German version in parallel, as the previous version had.

This list is as good or as bad as its support, and I need YOUR support to update and supplement this list. Please supplement if you know more and/or better ones. There are some more converters on the CTAN sites, but the following seem to be most promising for conversion to and from the currect versions of wordprocessors.

Neither correctness nor completeness is guaranteed.
All opinions mentioned (if any) are my own, not my employer's. Please send corrections, enhancements and supplements to the following address:
W.Hennings@fz-juelich.de

Note that this FAQ list contains information about converters ONLY between LaTeX and PC word processors. Converters to and from other formats may have own FAQ lists - e.g. see the link for converters to and from HTML.

General Remarks

Before looking for a converter, stop and think about a principal question:

What do you want to be converted in which way?

Do you want to convert the document structure, i.e. a heading should remain a heading, a list should remain a list etc., no matter how it will look like in the target format?
Or do you want to convert the appearance, i.e. how it looks like, no matter how it is represented in the target format?
Or do you want a mixture of both?
For using SGML as an intermediate format, you would have to specify the translation rules yourself (as far as I understood). This makes sense, and explains why different people have very different opinions about which converter best fits their needs: They simply have different demands and expectations on what should be converted and how.
So, not only practically there is no converter which is good for everyone and every purpose, but this is even principally impossible because there are no well-defined requirements which a converter should meet.

So keep this in mind when looking through the following list of converters, try yourself and decide what you need.

There are several ways to convert.

To illustrate these, let me restrict it to the Microsoft Word case:

use a Word macro: load LaTeX file as plain text, then search for LaTeX markup and insert formatting, special characters and equations.
use an external converter:

LaTeX -> RTF (Word ASCII format, use Word's own RTF import)
LaTeX -> HTML (use Word's internet assistant)
maybe other external format(s)

In the previous version I dared to recommend using HTML as an intermediate format. However I got some comments saying that they had much better experience with <insert your favorite converter here>.

Moreover, the <favorite converter> of someone else didn't work at all for me, and the other way around.

So I am sorry not to have ANY recommendation now. There is no converter satisfying everyone's needs, nor working under all conditions. I am sorry again you have to try for your own.

Using a Word macro

Free:

tex2doc, by Thomas Link: LaTeX to WinWord 6 and WinWord 7(95) converter, written as Word macros. Also attempts to convert tables!

ltx2word, by myself: LaTeX to WinWord 6, WinWord 7(95) and WinWord 97 converter, written as Word macros. No tables yet.

Converting to RTF

Free:

TeX2RTF : LaTeX-to-RTF converter. TeX2RTF homepage (UK site)

The following two converters are based on the latex2rtf converter which was originally developed by a group of students supervised by Ralf Schlatterbeck at TU Wien (Vienna). Unfortunately, two different teams have been implementing further developments, not knowing of each other.

latex2rtf: LaTeX-to-RTF-converter (currently maintained by Georg Lehner)

ltx2rtf: LaTeX-to-RTF-converter (currently maintained by Daniel Taupin)

Converting to WordPerfect format

Commercial:

TexPort converts your TeX and LaTeX files to WordPerfect or Microsoft Word documents. KTALK's home page (USA)

HTML as intermediate format

There are free HTML converters for Word 6 and 7 for Windows available from Microsoft:
Download... IA for Word 6 / IA for Word 7 / IA for Word for Mac
Word 97 contains it by default (its installation may have to be explicitly chosen during the Word 97 setup in user-defined mode), but in contrary to the previous versions it only recognizes heading styles if they are first converted into the corresponding html styles. Also, Word 97 sometimes inserts unnecessary tags.

WordPerfect 7 and up have an integrated InternetPublisher.
For WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows, the InternetPublisher is available separately:
Download... InternetPublisher for WPWin 6.1

There also is a tool for Unix which is intended to convert word6, word7(95) and word8(97) binary files to html. See http://www.su.shuttle.de/turbo/word2html.c.gz

General Remarks

Because HTML is a structured format, the conversion between HTML and LaTeX is rather straightforward. However there remain the limitations of HTML compared to LaTeX, i.e. there are many elements in LaTeX which can not (yet?) be represented in HTML.

See www.w3.org for a list of converters between word processors and HTML . Or see Liste von Konvertern zwischen HTML und LaTeX (auf Deutsch).

Some converters are available from CTAN ("Comprehensive TeX Archive Network"), e.g. in .../support/latex2html and .../support/html2latex.
(The ... stands for a host specific base directory, which often is either "/pub/tex" or "/tex-archive")

LaTeX to HTML

latex2html (UK site): LaTeX-to-HTML converter which converts LaTeX formulae into eps or gif graphics.
latex2html sources (US site)

tth (US site): LaTeX-to-HTML converter which translates LaTeX into HTML3.2 markup. Formulae are also translated into standard html markup. A version which translates maths to MML is in the testing phase.

ltoh (US site): LaTeX-to-HTML converter which is highly customizable, i.e. you can define how the LaTeX macros which are used in your document are to be translated.

HEVEA (FR site): LaTeX-to-HTML converter which translates LaTeX into HTML4.0 markup. Formulae are also translated into standard html markup (not yet using MML).

Other intermediate formats

There are ways to use SGML as intermediate format, and others have used it successfully. Having had a quick look at it, I found it rather complicated, especially it seems that you have to define the translation rules yourself. So I did not put more effort in trying to use it. If anyone can give a ready-to-use cookbook solution, I will include it here.

Converting to FrameMaker

la2mml: converts LaTeX to FrameMaker format. homepage

FrameMaker Utilities (UK site): Contains converters for both directions (LaTeX <-> FrameMaker) as well as templates which make conversion from Framemaker to LaTeX more easy

Related WWW pages:

Converters ported to Macintosh

General:

DANTE's LaTeX-PC-Konverter-Liste (auf Deutsch)

Der deutsche CTAN Server (The German CTAN server)

The British CTAN server

The USA CTAN Server

Deutscher CTAN Server, freie Konverter

British CTAN server, free converters

USA CTAN Server, free converters

it must remain intact and the contents unchanged; if you'd like to have something changed, contact me instead. Reformatting (e.g. from HTML to some other presentation format) is granted as long as the contents are unchanged.
you may NOT ask money for it except a reasonable cost for media and distribution