Reference · honest baseline
Compatibility
matrix
LaTeX and Word describe documents differently. This page lists, feature by feature, what our engine currently supports, partially supports, and can't carry across. Every conversion also ships a per-file quality report so you know exactly what dropped.
| Feature | LaTeX → Word | Word → LaTeX | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
Math Inline & display equations (amsmath, amsfonts, amssymb) | Supported | Supported | Converted to native Word equations (OMML) — editable in Word's equation editor. Every run is verified: if math ever flattens to plain Unicode text, the quality report says so. |
Math align, gather, split, cases, array, multline, matrices | Supported | Mostly supported | Alignment markers are normalized before conversion, so no stray & or \\ leaks into the Word text. Advanced operators and relations (\rtimes, \ltimes, \lhd, \rhd, \pmod, \bmod, \bumpeq) are kept rather than stripped. |
Math Equation numbering & labels | Mostly supported | Limited | Numbers (including subequations) render next to the equation; \ref / \eqref resolve to static text rather than live Word fields. |
Math IEEEeqnarray / mathtools macros | Mostly supported | Limited | Normalized to amsmath equivalents before conversion (\dfrac, \bigg, \stackrel, \genfrac, norm bars and similar are preserved). |
Math Custom \newcommand / \renewcommand macros | Mostly supported | Not supported | Macros with arguments are recursively expanded before conversion; verbatim and listings blocks are masked so their contents are never rewritten. Complex TeX programming (\def with delimiters, counters, loops) is stripped. |
Math \substack limits (multi-line sums and integrals) | Limited | Not supported | Stacked limits are converted to Word's stacked layout where possible; complex cases may appear on one line. |
Figures \includegraphics (PNG, JPG) | Supported | Supported | Embedded when a ZIP with the images is supplied. |
Figures PDF figures | Mostly supported | n/a | Auto-rasterized to PNG for Word embedding. |
Figures TikZ / PGFPlots / tikz-cd / circuitikz | Mostly supported | n/a | Rendered as high-resolution pictures using your document's own colour, style and macro definitions, including standalone axis and groupplot code. Diagram code is shielded from the styling pass, so labels, fonts and node positions stay exactly as drawn. Pictures get real page-proportional sizes — full width for single figures, half width for side-by-side ones. Blocks that still fail embed a labelled placeholder with the original code; heavy 3D scenes are the usual failures. |
Figures Retry a single failed diagram | Supported | n/a | Each failed TikZ block gets its own retry action in the quality report — no need to reconvert the whole document. |
Figures subfigure / wrapfigure / sidewaysfigure | Limited | Limited | Layout is flattened; captions are preserved. |
Tables tabular, tabularx, longtable | Mostly supported | Mostly supported | Structure and cells preserved; column widths are approximated. |
Tables multirow, multicolumn, makecell | Mostly supported | Limited | Merged cells generally work; complex nested formatting may flatten. |
Tables booktabs rules (\toprule, \midrule, \bottomrule) | Mostly supported | Limited | Rules become standard Word table borders; booktabs' varying rule thicknesses and spacing are not reproduced exactly. |
Tables Table & figure captions ("Table N", "Figure N") | Mostly supported | Mostly supported | Caption text is preserved; the numbers are written as static text, not live Word caption fields, so they won't renumber automatically in Word. |
Structure Table of contents (\tableofcontents) | Mostly supported | Limited | A real Word contents field is inserted with headings pre-filled. Page numbers update in desktop Word (right-click → Update field); some phone apps show it without page numbers. |
Structure Sections, subsections, chapters | Supported | Supported | Mapped to Word heading styles. |
Structure Lists, quotes, footnotes | Supported | Supported | Custom enumerate labels such as [(i)] or [a)] are preserved. |
Structure Text colour (\textcolor, \color) & paragraph alignment | Supported | Mostly supported | Colours and centered/flushright blocks are carried through the pipeline and re-applied as native Word run and paragraph formatting. |
Structure Hyperlinks & \url | Supported | Supported | Become clickable Word hyperlinks. |
Structure Theorem-like environments (theorem, lemma, proof, definition) | Mostly supported | Limited | Headings and bodies survive with emphasis; automatic numbering from custom \newtheorem counters is approximated. Non-standard thesis shorthand environments are auto-normalized first. |
Structure Cross-references (\ref, \eqref, \pageref) | Limited | Not supported | Reference numbers may render as static text; live cross-refs are not reconstructed. |
Citations \cite, \citep, \citet, \parencite, \textcite (natbib / biblatex) | Supported | Limited | Rewritten to inline author–year text (e.g. “(Smith, 2023)” or “Smith (2023)”) when the .bib file is included in the uploaded ZIP. |
Citations BibTeX bibliography (.bib) resolved to a References section | Mostly supported | Not supported | Upload the .tex and .bib together as a .zip. Entries cited in the paper are parsed and appended as a formatted, APA-style References section (journal, book, thesis, in-proceedings, DOI/URL). Custom CSL styles are not applied. |
Citations BibLaTeX advanced features (\autocite styles, sort, keyword filters) | Limited | Not supported | Commands are rewritten to plain author–year citations; per-style ordering, filtering, and localized punctuation are not preserved. |
Citations Manual thebibliography environments | Supported | Mostly supported | Entries are kept and rendered as a References list, and reported in the quality report instead of being silently dropped. |
Layout Document class (article, report, book) | Supported | Supported | |
Layout Two-column classes (IEEEtran, acmart, revtex) | Limited | n/a | Output is single-column; author blocks and page geometry are flattened. |
Layout Beamer presentations | Not supported | Not supported | Frames become sections; not intended for Word. |
Layout Custom page geometry / fancyhdr / titlesec | Not supported | Not supported | Word uses its own page/header model. |
Code listings / minted / verbatim / algorithmicx | Mostly supported | Limited | Code and algorithm blocks become monospace with contents and indentation preserved byte-for-byte; minted and \mintinline work without any local syntax-highlighter installed. Captions and labels are kept, syntax colouring is not. |
Front matter Title, author, abstract | Supported | Mostly supported | Author affiliations from custom classes may be simplified. |
Packaging .zip upload with images, .bib, and \input / \include files | Supported | n/a | Multi-file projects are recursively flattened into a single document before conversion, so nested chapter files and asset folders resolve correctly. |
Reporting Per-file quality report | Supported | Supported | Every run lists removed commands, unrendered diagrams, and math-fidelity checks, with links back to the exact source snippet — and is exportable as PDF. |
Chemistry mhchem chemical formulas & reactions (\ce, \cee) | Supported | Limited | Formulas, ionic charges (H⁺, e⁻, SO₄²⁻), isotope and nuclear-decay notation, reaction arrows (→, ⇌) and state symbols become native, editable Word equations — including \ce used inside align, equation or \frac. |
Units siunitx quantities and S-columns (\qty, \num, \unit, \SI) | Mostly supported | Limited | Numbers and units are normalized into readable Word text or math; table S-columns become right-aligned numeric columns so decimal points line up. |
Integrity Word file validity (no “unreadable content” prompt) | Supported | n/a | Every document is checked and repaired before download: empty table cells are filled, duplicated paragraph settings merged, equation and matrix properties normalized, and all embedded image types declared, so Word opens the file on the first try. |
A note on fidelity claims
No LaTeX ↔ Word engine reaches 100% for every source. Fidelity depends heavily on your document — a plain article with amsmath equations converts almost losslessly, while a two-column IEEEtran paper with TikZ diagrams and a BibTeX bibliography will lose layout and citations. The quality report inside every conversion is the honest, file-specific answer.