Adding Word files to document

Question

I am preparing a report using LaTeX and would like to add several documents saved as Word files. I have tried this before making each page a figure but I really don't like the results. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

if you need the documents as TeX source, then install a trial version of

• grindeq or convert it online
• Word2TeX
• install a virtuell pdf printer for later use of package pdfpages or simply the command \includegraphics

Answer 2

The pdfpages package, found here, is useful for appending PDF versions of the Word documents to LaTeX documents.

Originally suggested by @Jan Hlavacek in a comment, it should be an official answer.

Thank you to @Alan Munn for pointing out the pagecommand option to add page headers and numbers, as was posted here. The [pagecommand={}] option will maintain the normal page layout, as suggested by @Martin Scharrer here.

You should also pay particular attention that the default \includepdf{} behaviour of this package is to only show the first page. Adding the [pages=-] option includes all pages. This has been addressed by @Mario S. E. here.

Answer 3

I wrote a blog post comparing a number of different ways of converting documents to LaTeX format.

My two favorites are the LaTeX export routine of the OpenSource Word Processor AbiWord which can open a file in Word format and save as LaTeX (this uses the wvWare libraries for conversion; make sure you install the extra export plugins and math support when you install), and the rtf2latex2e converter which will convert RTF files to LaTeX (of course you must first export to RTF in Word).

If this is something you really care about, though, nothing will eliminate the need for going over the results and tweaking them as needed.

Answer 4

Another way to obtain a LaTeX source would be to use OpenOffice.org Writer with the Writer2LaTeX extension. However, the resulting source will need some post-processing.