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I want to create a presentation in Impress and need to embed a formula in text. I only found very old forum posts (over five years old), which said it is not possible.

Has this changed by now? How can I do it?

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  • Which Version of LibreOffice are you using? 4.x?
    – tohuwawohu
    Nov 25, 2013 at 18:14
  • @tohuwawohu 4.1.2.3
    – Tim
    Nov 25, 2013 at 18:20
  • It is still not possible. In Writer, you can change the anchor type. In Impress, the formula is treated as an object, and there is no way to set anchor. This is a very old feature deficiency reported since 2003 during OpenOffice era: issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=22309
    – syockit
    Jul 25, 2014 at 2:27

4 Answers 4

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No, it is not possible to embed a formula or a graphical object in text in draw and impress.

In Libreoffice/Openoffice terms this would be called "anchoring the formula as a character". This is something that is possible in writer (contrary to one of the answers above).

TeXMaths is a great addition to Libreoffice, but can in no way help on this issue.

Unfortunately, this is a great deficiency that makes impress very very badly suited for any serious scientific presentation.

If you want to follow the state of this issue, look at https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=35033

If you want to support the addition of this feature to libreoffice, there is a bounty that you can contribute to at http://www.freedomsponsors.org/core/issue/473/allow-inline-graphics-formulas-in-impress-and-draw

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With a current LO version, you can insert a formula quite easily usinng the menu: Insert -> Object -> Formula:

Insert Formula

By default, LO puts the formula in the center of the content area, so you may have to move and resize it manually. Double-clicking the formula will open LO Math again, so you can edit the formula afterwards, too.

EDIT:

Maybe the TexMaths extension makes inserting formulae into Impress documents easier - i didn't test it. See also the TexMaths homepage.

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  • 4
    Okay, I knew that. What I wanted to know is if there was the possibility to use it inside of a line of text. Just as you would do using LaTeX with "First bullet point shows that $\sum_i x_i = 5$"
    – Tim
    Nov 25, 2013 at 18:35
  • Oh, sorry, now i understand. No, AFAIK you can't "mix" a formula into a line of text - one even can't anchor a formula to a character, only to the slide itself - so if the text changes, you may have re-arrange the formula objects. :-( AFAIK Impress doesn't offer more features than writer, and AFAIK writer doesn't offer such a feature ("mix" formula into text) itself.
    – tohuwawohu
    Nov 25, 2013 at 18:50
  • @Tim: added a link to the TexMath extension... HTH
    – tohuwawohu
    Nov 25, 2013 at 19:15
  • This does the same (but at least it looks nicer)
    – Tim
    Nov 25, 2013 at 19:29
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Well, as @user2340231 mentioned this is an issue that has yet not been solved. Nevertheless I found that installing the old OOoLatex extension that was available for OpenOffice, does the job.

In principle just follow the instructions on this ArchLinux wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ooolatex

Download the extension from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolatex/files/OOoLatex/OOoLatex-4.0.0-beta/ And also the fonts linked there: OOoLatexFonts.zip.

Install the extension by downloading it to your disk and opening the Extension Manager in Libre Office -> Tools.

Then also install the fonts, as mentioned in the wiki, in order to have available simple mathematical expressions in line with the text using the Expand option of the OOoLatex extension.

Restart LibreOffice and you are ready to go.

This worked for me on a manjaro Linux, but these steps are completely distribution-independent.

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You can follow a trick like this: Select any text that you want, for ex: this is length h_0 of flat plate....

then you select h_0, then you go to Insert -> Object -> Formula
you will get what you want, the formula in the line

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