CodeCogs® | fxRender

Render Documentation

fxRender is a panel beside your sheet. Choose a control below to read what it does.

Download example spreadsheet

Copying and saving an equation

The preview shows the equation for whichever cell you have selected, and the controls beside it hand that equation to another program — as a picture, as a vector file, as MathML, or as LaTeX.

The four controls

ControlWhat you getBest for
PNG A picture, on the clipboard Word, PowerPoint, email, anywhere that takes an image. The reliable choice.
SVG A vector, saved as a file Drawing programs, and printing at any size. See the limitations below.
MathML MathML, on the clipboard Word, where it becomes a real Word equation you can edit.
Copy The LaTeX, on the clipboard Papers, wikis, the equation editor. Shown on the LaTeX tab.

PNG — a picture

Press PNG and paste. The image is drawn at three times the size it occupies, so it stays sharp when printed or when the page is zoomed, and it records that resolution inside the file so Word places it at the right size rather than three times too large.

MathML — an equation Word can edit

Press MathML and paste into Word, and Word converts it into one of its own equation objects. That is worth knowing: unlike a picture, it scales with the document's type, can be edited in Word's equation editor, and stays sharp at any zoom.

The colours come with it. Anything the equation colours deliberately — names, units — keeps its colour, and everything else takes the Main colour from Settings.

SVG — a vector file

Press SVG and the file is saved, named after the cell it came from (fxRender-D12.svg). Insert it into a document with Insert → Pictures, or open it in a drawing program.

The limitations of SVG

An SVG is worth understanding before relying on it, because it behaves differently from the other two.

  • It is saved, not copied. The clipboard cannot carry an SVG out of a task pane, and Word will not paste one in any case. A file is the only route.
  • It needs the font wherever it is opened. The file names a mathematics font rather than carrying the letter shapes itself. On a machine without that font, another is substituted and the equation is drawn with the right symbols in the wrong places — subtly, puzzlingly wrong rather than obviously broken.
  • So it does not travel. An SVG made here opens correctly on this machine and on others set up like it. Sent to someone else, it may not. If the equation is going to leave your machine, send the PNG: it carries its own pixels and cannot be substituted.

The equation itself is always typeset as a vector first. The PNG is that vector rasterised, which is why it is sharp; the SVG is the vector itself.