MathType Tip: Changing the font & size of all equations in a Word document

Applies to:

NOTE: This tip depends on techniques covered in two previous tips: Changing the font size of individual equations, and Saving preference files. If you haven't read these tips yet, we encourage you to do so before proceeding with this tip.

Situation: You've just created the most beautiful document in the world. Trouble is, you wanted it to all fit onto one page, but you have a small amount spilling over to page 2. You don't want to change the margins or delete anything from the document, so your only choice is to change the font and/or the size of the font. Word makes it easy enough to change the text of the document, but it doesn't know how to format the equations. That's where MathType comes in.

Solution:

1. Choose the Format Equations command from the Format group on the Ribbon's MathType tab (MathType menu in Word 2003 and 2011). Screen shots here are from Word 2011 on the Mac, and will look similar on Windows.
   
2. You'll notice some of the options are grayed-out and hence not available. We'll cover the "Current document" option in a future tip, but the "Equation on clipboard" option isn't available since we haven't copied an equation to the clipboard. If your "Equation on clipboard" option is available, it just means that you're probably using copy & paste to get the equations into your document (which isn't the best way to do it, but we'll cover that in a separate tip).
3. We're going to use the "MathType preference file" option, since we've already read the tip on the subject, and now have several MathType preference files to choose from. You don't need to click the radio button associated with this option; just go ahead and click Browse.
4. You want to format your Word document to Arial-10pt, so choose that preference file from the list. (We're assuming this is one of the preference files you created after reading the tip. If you haven't created the Arial10 preference file, go ahead and do so now.) Click Open, make sure Whole document is selected, then click OK.
5. So now in a matter of a few seconds, MathType will re-format all the equations in your document, and you'll be presented with a success notice looking something like this:
   

A lot faster than changing each one individually, isn't it? If you have a tip that you'd like to pass along to us for possible inclusion in our Tips & Tricks, email us. If you want to make sure you're among the first to know about new MathType Tips, subscribe to our Design Science News blog.