What is the best way to insert source code examples into a Microsoft Word document

Question

I have to write some documents that will include source code examples  Some of the examples will be written from the IDE  and others would be written in place  My examples are primarily in Java   As someone who is used to LaTeX  doing this in Word is extremely painful  However  I am bound to Word for this  The only options I have seen are    Write or copy into the document  then use a fixed type font  arrange formatting and hope that Word didn t uppercase stuff for you  Needless to say  this looks like crap  Copy and paste screenshots of source code from the IDE  At least I keep colors  However  if I change my font size  I m screwed  I m also screwed across page boundaries  And let s admit it  Word is not great at managing multiple images on a document  Write HTML  not really an option here    Is there some better  and ideally portable  way to do this  Is there at least some sort of verbatim style similar to the LaTeX environment  Is there at least some pretty printer that I could copy-and-paste as RTF

User · Answer

On a Mac I find this solution with vim to be wonderful   https   github com zerowidth vim-copy-as-rtf

User · Answer

I recently came across this post and found some useful hints  However  I ended up using an entirely different approach which suited my needs  I am sharing the approach and my reasoning of why I chose this approach  The post is longer than I would have liked  but I believe screenshots are always helpful  Hopefully  the answer would be useful to someone   My requirements were the following     Add code snippets to a word document  with syntax highlighting for easier visibility and differentiation of code and other text  Code snippet shall be inline with other text  Code snippet shall break across pages smoothly without any extra effort  Code snippet shall have a nice border  Code snippet shall have spell-check disabled    My Approach is as listed below    Use external tool to achieve syntax highlighting requirement 1 above    One could use notepad plus plus as described above  However  I use the tool present here - http   www planetb ca syntax-highlight-word  This gives me the option to use line number  as well as very nice syntax highlighting  Please use Google Chrome for this step  because syntax highlight is not copied when using Mozilla Firefox  as also pointed out by couple of user comments   Steps to achieve syntax highlighting are listed below    Open the website provided above in chrome and Copy the code snippet in the text area  I will be using a sample XML to demonstrate this  XML sample from here - http   www service-architecture com articles object-oriented-databases xml file for complex data html   Select the language from drop down menu  Click  Show Highlighted  button  It will open a new tab  with syntax-highlighted code snippet  in this case the XML sample we chose  See image below for example   To Turn off the line numbers  inspect the page in chrome  Then  under styles  deselect the  margin  property in   dp-highlighter ol   as shown in the image below  If you want to keep the line numbers  go to next step  Select the syntax-highlighted code and click copy  Now your code is ready to be pasted into Microsoft word   Thanks to this blog for providing this information - http   idratherbewriting com 2013 04 04 adding-syntax-highlighting-to-code-examples-online-and-in-microsoft-word    To achieve requirements 2  3 and 4 above  use table in Microsoft word  to insert the code snippet  Steps are listed below    Insert a table with single column  Paste the copied text from step 1  in the table column  I have kept the line numbers to show how well this works with Microsoft word  Apply border  as you like  I have used size 1pt  Resulting Microsoft word snippet will appear as shown in screenshot below  Note how nicely it breaks across the page - NO extra effort needed to manage this  which you would face if inserting  OpenDocument Text  object or if using  Simple TextBox     To achieve requirement 5  follow the steps below    Select the entire table or the text  Go to Review tab  Under Language  choose  Proofing Language   A new pop-up will be presented  Select  Do not check spelling or grammar   Then  click OK   Resulting text has spell-check disabled  Final result is shown in the image below and meets all the requirements      Please provide if you have any feedback or improvements or run into any issues with the approach

User · Answer

If you are still looking for an simple way to add code snippets   you can easily go to  Insert     Object     Opendocument Text    paste your code   Save and Close   You could also put this into a macro and add it to your easy access bar   notes     This will only take up to one page of code  Your Code will not be autocorrected  You can only interact with it by double-clicking it

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These answers look outdated and quite tedious compared to the web add-in solution  which is available for products since Office 2013    I m using Easy Code Formatter  which allows you to codify the text in-place  It also gives you line-numbering options  highlighting  different styles and the styles are open sourced here  https   github com armhil easy-code-formatter-styles so you could extend the styling yourself  To install - open Microsoft Word  go to Insert Tab   click  Get Add-ins  and search for  Easy Code Formatter

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You can use Open Xml Sdk for this  If you have the code in html with color and formatting  You can use altchunks to add it to the word documents  Refer this post Add HTML String to OpenXML    docx  Document Hope this helps

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This is related to this answer  https   stackoverflow com a 2653406 931265 Creating an object solved all of my problems   Insert   Object   Opendocument Text  This will open a document window  paste your text  format it how you want  and close it   The result is a figure  Right click the object  and select  add a caption    You can now make cross references  create a table of figures

User · Answer

I have tried all your methods  but they didn t work for me  in fact I have created an easier method using MS Word Tables   Pros    More beautiful Easier to manage  amp  more consistent Are less prone to problems No need for external plugins or MS Word micro coding  Easier to handle by simple users  such as myself     Cons  It will not maintain code colouring although someone could improve my trick   Steps    Insert a 3x3 table  in my case I always make the total width of the table equals the free page s width  3 rows minimum to test the tables style   Use invisible borders   No Borders  option   and activate  View Gridlines  option  it should have this aspect  Be ware that those lines are for you to see the table s grid  and the will not be printed       Make the adjustments to cells  spacing and columns  width to get the aspect you like   You will have to get in  Table Properties  for fine tuning    Create a  Paragraph Style  with the name of  Code  just for your code snippets  check https   stackoverflow com a 25092977 8533804 to get the idea  you don t have to follow all of it  Create another  Paragraph Style  with the name of  Code numberline  that will be based upon the previous created style   In the newly created  Code numberline  add the numbering style that you like  this will automate line numbering    Apply  Code numberline  to the first column  and  Code  to the 3 column   Add a fill in the middle column   Save that table style and enjoy

User · Answer

There is an easy way if you want simple code formatting    Open word  Insert tab  click on  Get Add-ins  search for  Content mixer   3 click on  Add    Then content mixer add will open automatically and you can copy paste your code in there and click on  Insert  to insert it in word doc

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This is what i did   End results     https   stackoverflow com a 25092977 1161594

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I absolutely hate and despise working for free for Microsoft  given how after all those billions of dollars they STILL do not to have proper guides about stuff like this with screenshots on their damn website    Anyways  here is a quick guide in Word 2010  using Notepad   for syntax coloring  and a TextBox which can be captioned    Choose Insert   Text Box   Simple Text Box   A default text box is inserted   Switch to NPP  choose the language for syntax coloring of your code  go to Plugins   NPPExport   Copy RTF to clipboard   Switch back to word  and paste into the text box - it may be too small           so you may have to change its size   Having selected the text box  right-click on it  then choose Insert Caption       In the Caption menu  if you don t have one already  click New Label  and set the new label to  Code   click OK           then in the Caption dialog  switch the label to Code  and hit OK   Finally  type your caption in the newly created caption box

User · Answer

You need to define a style in your Word document and use that for source code  I usually have a style called  Code  which has a monospaced font in a small point size  fixed size tabs  single line spacing  no before after paragraph spacing  etc  You only need to define this style once and then reuse it  You paste in your source code and apply the  Code  style to it   Note that some editors  e g  Xcode on the Mac  add RTF as well as text to the clipboard when copying pasting between applications - Word recognises RTF and helpfully retains the formatting  syntax colouring  etc   Source code in Xcode     Copied and pasted to Word      Note  it s a good idea to disable spell-checking in your  Code  style in Word

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It kind of depends on the IDE  Both Visual Studio and Eclipse  for example  will allow you to copy as RTF and paste into Word  keeping all your formatting    Notepad   has a plugin called  NppExport   comes pre-installed  that allows you to copy to RTF  though I don t care much for Notepad   s syntax highlighting  it d definitely be passable though   What it does do is support dozens of languages  whereas the aforementioned IDEs are limited to a handful each  without other plug-ins

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Use this - http   hilite me   hilite me converts your code snippets into pretty-printed HTML format  easily embeddable into blog posts  emails and websites   How  Just copy the source code to the left pane  select the language and the color scheme  and click  Highlight    The HTML from the right pane can now be pasted to your blog or email  no external CSS or Javascript files are required   For Microsoft Word document  Copy the the content from the Preview section and paste to your Microsoft Word document   3 sections   Source Code   HTML and Preview

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You can using Plugin Syntax Highlight in Ms Word https   store office com syntax-highlighter-WA104315019 aspx assetid WA104315019   i follow that step and it s work

User · Answer

In Word  it is possible to paste code that uses color to differentiate comments from code using  Paste Keep Source Formatting   However  if you use the pasted code to create a new style  Word automatically strips the color coded text and changes them to be black  or whatever the auto default color is   Since applying a style is the best way to ensure compliance with document format requirements  Word is not very useful for documenting software programs  Unfortunately  I don t recall Open Office being any better   The best work-around is to use the default simple text box

[ms-word] What is the best way to insert source code examples into a Microsoft Word document?

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