Writing and Editing Equations in Office 2011 for Mac

By Geetesh Bajaj and James Gordon from Office 2011 for Mac All-in-One For Dummies

Writing and editing equations in Office 2011 for Mac is easy, whether you're working with simple or complex equations. Office 2011 for Mac offers two ways for you to represent numeric equations that aren’t possible to type from the keyboard. to solve this equation problem:

The Equation option in Word 2011.
The Equation Editor in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint within Office 2011.

Equations from the Office Ribbon

Follow these steps to create a symbol or a formula in Word 2011 from within the Ribbon:

Position the cursor in your document where you want to place the symbol, formula, or equation.
Choose Insert→Equation from the menu.

This brings up the Equation Tools tab in the Ribbon.

Click a category from the Structures group on the Equation Tools tab.

Categories include Fractions, Scripts, Radical, and many more. All categories have a submenu that reveals galleries with several options. Hover your cursor over each option in the gallery, and descriptions appear as a ScreenTip. When you click the option you want to insert, a placeholder for the equation is placed in the open document.

Click inside dotted boxes to type numbers or text.
Click outside the equation area when you’re done.

The result is an equation placed in your document. To make additional edits to your equation, just click to select it and bring up the Equation Tools tab of the Ribbon. Edit and make changes as required.

Using the Equation Editor in Office 2011

Equation Editor is included with Microsoft Office and lets you type mathematical symbols and equations.

Although Equation Editor looks complicated, it’s actually quite easy to use:

Position the cursor in your document where you want to place the symbol, formula, or equation.
From the main menu, choose Insert→Object.

This step brings up the Object dialog.
Scroll up or down and choose the Microsoft Equation option, and then click OK.

Equation Editor opens in its own window.
Click a formula template from the symbols categories.

Some categories have submenus from which to choose. Descriptions appear when you mouse over the various symbols.
Click inside dotted boxes to type numbers or text.

You can add text by simply typing in the Editing pane. For example, you can take a formula and turn it into an equation by typing y= in front of the formula.
Click the red Close button when you’re done.

The result is an Equation Editor object in your document. To reopen Equation Editor to make additional edits to your object, just right-click the border of the Equation Editor object in the document and then choose Open Equation Object from the pop-up menu.