Math Fonts in Microsoft Office

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Mr. Chase

As you know, Microsoft Office has a new and improved Equation Editor that ROCKS. It is so quick and easy and comes with many benefits. Check out my previous posts on Equation Editor here, here, and here to see why it’s so great.

One issue everyone has with the new Equation Editor, however, is the limited ability to change the font typeface. The default that comes with word, Cambria Math, is nice but doesn’t suit everyone’s needs. If you’re typesetting a document with a font other than Cambria, then it looks a little weird to have your equations in a different font.

After some extensive research, I’ve found three other nice fonts that work with Microsoft Office’s new Equation Editor (these are compatible with Office 2007 or later):

XITS Math is somewhat compatible with Times (download here).
Asana Math is compatible with Palatino (download here) and if you don’t have Palatino, you can download it here, among other places
Latin Modern is the LaTeX font of choice. There is a math font (download here) and a whole family of text fonts (download here). Note: these may not look good on screen, but they look just perfect when printed.

To illustrate what these fonts look like, I’ve taken a screenshot below, and I’ve also uploaded the doc file and the pdf file. The doc file won’t render correctly on your machine, however, unless you actually download all the aforementioned fonts.

$Math Fonts$

I hope this helps those who have been searching for alternative fonts for Microsoft Equation Editor. In the comments, please let me know if you find others!

41 thoughts on “Math Fonts in Microsoft Office”

N Hardy on January 6, 2013 at 11:16 pm said:

Thanks VERY much for this infomation. My BC Calc kids prefer Latin Modern, and now I can use the Eq Editor along with, or inspite of, Mathtype to type the documents that way.

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Richard Regal on February 11, 2013 at 2:16 pm said:

There is also Minion Math at http://www.typoma.com/en/fonts.html

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- Augustine on October 21, 2017 at 7:32 pm said:
  
  I just wonder if Minion Math could be used with Word 2016?
  
  Reply ↓
  - Richard Regal on May 16, 2018 at 7:25 pm said:
    
    Well it [Minion Math] can be used in Word 2013, so I don’t think there would be problems with 2016.
Norm Hardy on February 11, 2013 at 2:46 pm said:

Well, I’m back to using the supplied Cambria / Cambria Math fonts for all my documents. The other options look great, but the readability of Cambria is winning out.

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Tony Lee on March 16, 2013 at 3:56 pm said:

After downloading the package, What should I do to install the XITS MATH for a Word: Mac 2011?

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- Mr. Chase on March 16, 2013 at 8:47 pm said:
  
  The XITS Math Font is in the Open Type Font (OTF) format. (http://www.adobe.com/type/opentype/)
  
  I don’t have a mac, so I can’t tell you for sure, but it looks like there have been some compatibility issues with mac (though the whole idea is that the format was designed to be platform-independent). Here’s an article from 2011 which talks about fixing some mac-related OTF issues: http://www.sibeliusblog.com/news/apple-releases-opentype-font-fix-for-mac-os-x-10-6-7/
  
  The wikipedia article may help too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenType
  
  Like I said, though, I don’t have a mac. If you figure it out, please come back and drop a comment for the sake of others who might have this issue!
  
  Reply ↓
- Mr. Chase on March 16, 2013 at 8:48 pm said:
  
  Oh actually, it occurs to me that you might just be asking how to install fonts on a mac, period. I was assuming you had an issue of some kind. If you’re just looking for the font-installation basics, here’s the first article I found when googling:
  http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/fixfonts/ht/install_fonts_m.htm
  
  Reply ↓
  - Tony Lee on March 17, 2013 at 11:33 am said:
    
    Thanks for your suggestions. I was able to install the fonts to my Mac. The trick was learning how to unhide the Library folder so the fonts can be copied there. I preferred FrameMaker for text and equations writing. It is a much superior product but unfortunately it is not made for Mac anymore ;o( I will share your tips with my colleagues as we all struggle with the equation editor.
Kumar Modepalli on September 23, 2013 at 5:32 pm said:

Hi Mr. chase
I have installed the fonts in MS word 2013. But when I tried to change the font style of equations they are still taking cambric math as their default and they are not changing . How to solve this

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- Mr. Chase on September 25, 2013 at 2:02 pm said:
  
  Kumar…sorry I’m not sure I’ll be able to help. I haven’t tried it with Word 2013, but I’m not sure why it would be any different. I assume you downloaded and installed the fonts into the font directory in the correct way. Are you sure you’re using the correct math font when you write your equation? (that is, you’re sure that it’s not a normal font?) Make sure you’re in math mode, then highlight the whole equation and change the font to XITS Math or whatever else you might have downloaded. If that’s not working, I’m not sure what else to tell you. Please stop by and leave another comment if you do figure out the problem!
  
  Reply ↓
  - Kumar Modepalli on September 30, 2013 at 3:51 pm said:
    
    Hi Chase thanks for your reply.
    
    I figured it out .. I restarted the word and it’s fine know.
    But the problem with latin modern font or XITS match font is that when I am using accent’s for the characters. In the word file they look fine and they take accent’s but when converted into PDF by saving it from MS word2013. These accents are not appearing . Is there a way to solve this problem?
    
    Thanks
    Kumar
  - Norm on September 30, 2013 at 4:04 pm said:
    
    Try using a different PDF maker, like CutePDF or Bullzip.
graphicconception on December 2, 2013 at 10:10 pm said:

Not sure if you have discovered this yet …

In Word 2010 you can change the font face of individual characters in a formula. You need to be in the Equation Tools tab. In the Tools section there is a Normal text lable that you can select. Highlight the letter first, it is a bit tricky to do this the right way, then click the Normal Text button. That should have converter the character to “normal text” so then you can change the font.

I have used it to insert some characters in EasyOpenFace font.

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- Mr. Chase on December 4, 2013 at 8:37 am said:
  
  Love love love this.. you’re totally right! I’ll make a special post about this sometime this week. I’m not sure when/if I’ll ever use this functionality, but what a great work around if you ever desperately need a certain font.
  
  Thank you for sharing!!
  
  Reply ↓
  - Mr. Chase on December 6, 2013 at 8:41 am said:
    
    post is here!
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Richard Regal on December 6, 2013 at 4:33 pm said:

There is also Minion Math, which is available here: http://www.typoma.com/en/fonts.html

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Peyman on March 4, 2014 at 5:39 am said:

I’m sorry, you forgot to mention how to add them?
I’m using Windows 7 and MS 2013.
If it’s *.TTF, you just copy and paste the file, however, there is no *.TTF file in these folders and there are actually many files!

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- Mr. Chase on March 4, 2014 at 7:50 am said:
  
  The .otf files are the ones you want; just copy and paste those files. Tell me if that works for you!
  
  Reply ↓
- Damjan Jakov on February 12, 2021 at 6:10 am said:
  
  I would like to share part of a conversation in a Microsoft Community forum, in which problems MS Word has with otf- fonts (opentype layout with postscript outlines) were discussed. The solutions given are very helpful and solved all the issues I had with Opentype math fonts (and any other Opentype fonts) in MS Word. Here the Latin Modern font family is discussed, but it applies to any other opentype fonts as well (sorry, I do not have the URL of the original post anymore):
  
  Person 1 (asking)
  —————————-
  “But I have one problem after a font installation. Letters of the installed Latin Modern Roman 12 font in my MS Word 2016 are bitmap and not vector.
  And after saving the document as PDF letters are like pictures so it looks very bad and functions like ctrl+f do not work. Please do you have any idea
  how to implement Latin Modern correctly to Word?”
  
  Person 2 (giving the solution)
  ———————————————
  “The issue lies in how Word handles open type fonts. They come in two flavors, opentype with true type outlines, and opentype with postscript
  outlines. Word (usually) correctly embeds the true type flavor but can’t do the postscript outlines type so renders them to bitmaps (thus making
  them look a bit rubbish, Boooo!)
  
  A solution if the font licence allows it is to use an online converter to convert your .otf font to .ttf, this will convert your the curves from cubic
  (postscript type) curves to quadratic (true type) curves and then install that. My experience is Word wil happily embed them once that is done.
  Of course the ideal would be if Word behaved and embeded both flavours of font nicely ;)”
  
  I hope that might help. A good online converter e.g. is Convertio, but others will do as well.
  
  Reply ↓
  - Mr. Chase on February 12, 2021 at 6:15 am said:
    
    Thank you for this helpful contribution, Damjan!
Mahmoud R Mahmoud on October 8, 2014 at 8:36 am said:

What about script fonts?

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- Mr. Chase on October 13, 2014 at 1:54 pm said:
  
  What are you asking Mahmoud?
  
  Are you asking if you can render math in fonts like Brush Script? I think the quick answer to this is “no.” But if someone wants to create such a font, go for it! I’m not sure why you would want to render math in a script font.
  
  If you’re asking about script letters (like you might use to indicate a collection of sets, for example), those are available in any full-feature math font like Cambria Math or the others mentioned above. The shortcuts in word \scriptA or \scriptB produce $\mathcal{A}$ or $\mathcal{B}$ .
  
  Reply ↓
  - Mahmoud Mahmoud on October 14, 2014 at 1:41 am said:
    
    Thank you for your answer. The second part is what I was looking for. however, I am looking for other forms of scripts other than Cambria to match the notations used by some authers but i do not know the names for them. For example, the script F that looks more like a T.
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Joseph on February 8, 2015 at 9:26 am said:

LM Mono was an awesome discovery, thanks!

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Mathsmaniac on June 23, 2015 at 7:59 am said:

Does anyone know of a Math font that would go well in a document where the main text is set in a sanserif font? Ideally, I’d like a sanserif Math font, but one with very light-touch serifs might do the trick.

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G on July 11, 2015 at 3:20 pm said:

You can install Fonts on the Mac using the Apple app “Font Book”.

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Jan on August 10, 2015 at 2:44 am said:

Actually, there exist 11 math fonts that can be used, see
http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/tg-math

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- Mr. Chase on August 11, 2015 at 10:22 pm said:
  
  What a great find. Thank you SO much for stopping by, Jan!
  
  Reply ↓
  - Jan on August 20, 2015 at 5:38 pm said:
    
    Well, I was looking for some experience when typesetting math in Office. It was my random walk on the web :.). I cannot imagine writing math in something else than (La)TeX. Recently I came across a one hundred page long thesis written in MS Office 2013 and I was quite surprised that the math typesetting was not looking bad at all as it used to look in previous Office versions. Finally Word adopted some typographic conventions that TeX knew 20 years ago. I will probably not test the user friendliness of writing math in Word, I have no reason (and time) for doing so, but I hope that some of the Office lovers might improve their documents by using some of the above free fonts from e-foundry (both text and math fonts).
- Damjan Jakov on February 12, 2021 at 7:45 am said:
  
  Another good opentype font family, which is not listed at the gust website, is Libertinus, with its opentype math font “Libertinus Math”, as well as its own sans serif font. It looks a bit like minion math and can be downoaded from github and maybe CTAN for free. Here Libertinus is mentioned, along the other opentype math fonts, including examples:
  
  https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/425098/which-opentype-math-fonts-are-available
  
  All of them can be installed not only in (La)TeX, but also in MS Word. A problem- free use is – at least in my experience- possible only after the conversion of the otf- files to ttf, and then installing the latter.
  
  Reply ↓
yaser on December 22, 2015 at 6:27 pm said:

thanks so much

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Mary Rowe on July 12, 2016 at 5:43 pm said:

I am admittedly not very computer savvy, but I clicked on the Asana-Math .otf and installed it. It now shows on my fonts, but I still don’t see how to get math icons (division sign, square root,,,,,) to show up. What am I doing wrong?? Thanks for any help 🙂

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- Mr. Chase on July 12, 2016 at 6:29 pm said:
  
  If you’re using a version of Microsoft Office 2007 or later, you can click “Insert Equation” on the Insert Ribbon. Or, to start the equation editor even faster, just press Alt+= on your keyboard (the Alt button and the equals button, simultaneously). This will put you into equation mode and you’ll be able to type equations.
  
  There are many keyboard shortcuts for typing math (such as x^2 being rendered as $x^2$ ), but you can also use the math templates along the Equation Editor Ribbon at the top. Once in Equation editor, you can use either Cambria Math or Asana-Math, now that you also have that font.
  
  Let me know if you need more clarification!
  
  ———
  
  For shortcuts in Equation Editor that will make you super quick, check out these posts:
  https://mrchasemath.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/microsoft-office-equation-editor/
  https://mrchasemath.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/more-on-microsoft-equation-editor/
  
  And for all my posts on Equation Editor:
  https://mrchasemath.wordpress.com/category/microsoft-equation-editor/
  
  Reply ↓
arjun on October 12, 2017 at 2:15 am said:

i can’t downloaded from github
please give me solution admin

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- Mr. Chase on May 15, 2018 at 3:41 pm said:
  
  (sorry for the long delay in replying to your comment — for some reason it went unnoticed by me!)
  
  I’m not sure exactly what the problem is. You tried the link and you got to the download page, and then what happened when you clicked the download link?
  
  Reply ↓
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