How do you display code snippets in MS Word preserving format and syntax highlighting? - ms-word

Does anyone know a way to display code in Microsoft Word documents that preserves coloring and formatting? Preferably, the method would also be unobtrusive and easy to update.
I have tried to include code as regular text which looks awful and gets in the way when editing regular text. I have also tried inserting objects, a WordPad document and Text Box, into the document then putting the code inside those objects. The code looks much better and is easier to avoid while editing the rest of the text. However, these objects can only span one page which makes editing a nightmare when several pages of code need to be added.
Lastly, I know that there are much better editors/formats that have no problem handling this but I am stuck working with MS word.

Here is the best way, for me, to add code inside word:
Go to Insert tab, Text section, click Object button (it's on the right)
Choose OpenDocument Text which will open a new embedded word document
Copy and paste your code from Visual Studio / Eclipse inside this embedded word page
Save and close
Advantages
The result looks very nice. Here are the advantages of this method:
The code keeps its original layout and colors
The code is separated from the rest of the document, as if it was a picture or a chart
Spelling errors won't be highlighted in the code (this is cool !)
And it takes only few seconds.

Download and install Notepad++ and do the following:
Paste your code in the window;
Select the programming language from the language menu;
Select the text to copy;
Right click and select Plugin commands -> Copy Text with Syntax Highlighting;
Paste it into MS Word and you are good to go!
Update 29/06/2013:
Notepad++ has a plugin called "NppExport" (comes pre-installed) that allows you to copy to RTF, HTML and ALL. It permits dozens of languages, whereas the aforementioned IDEs are limited to a handful each (without other plug-ins).
I use Copy all formats to clipboard and "paste as HTML" in MS word.

After reading a lot of related answers, I came across my own solution, which for me is the most suitable one.
Result looks like this:
As you can see, it is the same syntax highlighting like on Stack Overflow which is quite awesome.
Steps to reproduce:
on Stack Overflow
Goto Ask Question (preferably with Chrome)
Paste Code and add a language tag (e.g. Java) to get syntax hightlighting
Copy code from preview
in Word
Insert > Table > 1x1
Paste code (you may need to use Paste Special... > Formatted Text (RTF) from the Edit menu to not lose the syntax hilighting)
Table Design > Borders > No Border
Select code > Edit > Find > Replace
Search Document ^p (Paragraph Mark)
Replace With ^l (Manual Line Break)
(This is required to remove the gaps between some lines)
Select code again > Review > Language > check "Do not check spelling or grammar"
Finally add a caption using References > Insert Caption > New Label > name it "Listing" or sth
Sample code thanks to this guy

There is a nice Online Tool for that : https://www.troye.io/planetb/
Just copy the generated code and paste it into your word editing software. So far I've tried it on MS Word and WPS Writer, works really well.
Doesn't play nice with Firefox but works just fine on Chrome (and IE too, but who wants to use that).
One of the main benefits is that, unlike the Code Format Add-In for Word, it does NOT mess with your code, and respects various languages' syntax.
I tried many other options offered in other answers but I found this one to be the most efficient (quick and really effective).
There is also another online tool quoted in another answer (markup.su) but I find the planetB output more elegant (although less versatile).
Input :
Output :

I type my code in Visual Studio, and then copy-paste into word. it preserves the colors.

When I've done this, I've made extensive use of styles. It helps a lot.
What I do is create a paragraph style (perhaps called "Code Example" or something like that) which uses a monospaced font, carefully chosen tabs, a very light grey background, a thin black border above and below (that helps visibility a lot) and with spelling turned off. I also make sure that inter-line and inter-paragraph spacing are set right. I then create additional character styles on top (e.g., "Comment", "String", "Keyword", "Function Name Decl", "Variable Name Decl") which I layer on top; those set the color and whether the text is bold/italic. It's then pretty simple to go through and mark up a pasted example as being code and have it come out looking really good, and this is works well for short snippets. Long chunks of code probably should not normally be in something that's going to go on a dead tree. :-)
An advantage of doing it this way is that it is easy to adapt to whatever code you're doing; you don't have to rely on some IDE to figure out whatever is going on for you. (The main problem? Printed pages typically aren't as wide as editor windows so wrapping will suck...)

Maybe this is overly simple, but have you tried pasting in your code and setting the font on it to Courier New?

Try defining a style called 'code' and make it use a small fixed width font, it should look better then.
Use CTRL+SPACEBAR to reset style.

If you are using Sublime Text, you can copy the code from Sublime to MS Word preserving the syntax highlighting.
Install the package called SublimeHighlight.
In Sublime, using your cursor, select the code you want to copy, right click it, select 'copy as rtf', and paste into MS Word.

I'm using Easy Code Formatter. It's also an Office add-in. It allows you to select the coding style / and has a quick formatting button. Pretty neat.

In case you're like me and are too lazy or in a hurry and don't want to download additional software, you can use http://markup.su/highlighter/. It's very straight forward and supports several highlight themes and many programming languages. In my case I was using Visual Studio Code, which doesn't allow copying with format due to CSS involved in styling (as reported here).
Copy the text from the Preview box and then in Word go to Insert -> Textbox, paste the Preview from the website, highlight all the text, and then disable spell checking for that textbox.
This is what the code looks like finally.

The best way I found is by using the table.
Create a table with 1x1. Then copy the code and paste it.
If you're using the desktop app then it will inherit the code editor theme color and paste it accordingly, else you can change the table style to any color.
UPDATE ------------------
From Word 2021, you can directly paste the code and it will preserve the formatting. No need to create the table.
Thank you #RdC1965 for mentioning this.

This is a bit indirect, but it works very nicely. Get LiveWriter and install this plugin:
http://lvildosola.blogspot.com/2007/02/code-snippet-plugin-for-windows-live.html
Insert your code using the plugin into a blog post. Select all and copy it to Word.
It looks great and can include line numbers. It also spans pages decently.
HTH
Colby Africa

Vim has a nifty feature that converts code to HTML format preserving syntax highlighting, font style, background color and even line numbers. Run :TOhtml and vim creates a new buffer containing html markup.
Next, open this html file in a web browser and copy/paste whatever it rendered to Word. Vim tips wiki has more information.

In my experience copy-paste from eclipse and Notepad++ works directly with word.
For some reason I had a problem with a file that didn't preserve coloring. I made a new .java file, copy-paste code to that, then copy-paste to word and it worked...
As the other guys said, create a new paragraph style. What I do is use mono-spaced font like courier new, small size close to 8px for fonts, single spaced with no space between paragraphs, make tab stops small (0.5cm,1cm,..,5cm), put a simple line border around the text and disable grammar checks. That way i achieved the line braking of eclipse so I don't have to do anything more.
Hope I helped ;)

This is the simplest approach I follow. Consider I want to paste java code.
I paste the code here so that spaces, tabs and flower brackets are neatly formated http://www.tutorialspoint.com/online_java_formatter.htm
Then I paste the code got from step 1 here so that the colors, fonts are added to the code http://markup.su/highlighter/
Then paste the preview code got from step 2 to the MS word. Finally it will look like this

You can use VS code to keep code format and highlighting. Directly copy and paste code from VS.

you can simply use this Add-in on any office program.
Go to insert tab, then Get Add-ins, and search for Easy Syntax Highlighter
It supports
185 languages and 89 themes.
Automatic language detection.
Multi-language code highlighting.

Use a monospaced font like Lucida Console, which comes with Windows. If you cut/paste from Visual Studio or something that supports syntax highlighting, you can often preserve the colour scheme of the syntax highlighter.

Answer for people trying to resolve this issue in 2019:
Most answers to this question are outdated by now. I wish there was a way to reinspect old questions and answers every now and then!
The method I found for this question that works with Office 365 and its associated programs can be found here.

I'm using Word 2010 and I like copying and paste from a github gist. Just remember to keep source formatting!
I then change the font to DejaVu Sans Mono.
You can opt to copy with or without the numbering.

Copying into Eclipse and paste it in Word is also another option.

You can also use SciTE to paste code if you don't want to install heavy IDEs and then download plugins for all the code you're making. Simply choose your language from the language menu, type your code, high-light code, select Edit->Copy as RTF, paste into Word with formatting (default paste).
SciTE supports the following languages but probably has support for others: Abaqus*, Ada, ANS.1 MIB definition files*, APDL, Assembler (NASM, MASM), Asymptote*, AutoIt*, Avenue*, Batch files (MS-DOS), Baan*, Bash*, BlitzBasic*, Bullant*, C/C++/C#, Clarion, cmake*, conf (Apache), CSound, CSS*, D, diff files*, E-Script*, Eiffel*, Erlang*, Flagship (Clipper / XBase), Flash (ActionScript), Fortran*, Forth*, GAP*, Gettext, Haskell, HTML*, HTML with embedded JavaScript, VBScript, PHP and ASP*, Gui4Cli*, IDL - both MSIDL and XPIDL*, INI, properties* and similar, InnoSetup*, Java*, JavaScript*, LISP*, LOT*, Lout*, Lua*, Make, Matlab*, Metapost*, MMIXAL, MSSQL, nnCron, NSIS*, Objective Caml*, Opal, Octave*, Pascal/Delphi*, Perl, most of it except for some ambiguous cases*, PL/M*, Progress*, PostScript*, POV-Ray*, PowerBasic*, PowerShell*, PureBasic*, Python*, R*, Rebol*, Ruby*, Scheme*, scriptol*, Specman E*, Spice, Smalltalk, SQL and PLSQL, TADS3*, TeX and LaTeX, Tcl/Tk*, VB and VBScript*, Verilog*, VHDL*, XML*, YAML*.

If you are using Intellij IDEA, just copy the code from the IDE and paste it in the word document.

A web site for coloration with lots of languages.
http://hilite.me/
You can host one yourself since it is open source. The code is on github.

There really isn't a clean way to do it, and it could still look fishy based on your exact style settings.
What you could try to do is to first run a code-to-HTML conversion (there are many programs that do that), and then try to open up the HTML file with word, that might hopefully provide you with the formatted and pretty code, and then copy and paste it into your document.

I was also looking for it and ended up creating something for my code display.
Here's a good way:
Create a rectangular form and place your text inside.
Change the font to Consolas and size ~10.
Change the text font to gray near-black (gray 25%, darker 75%)
Use darker colors to highlight your text if needed and choose one to be the contour.

I have created an easier method using tables, as they are easier to create, manage, and more consistent (with the possibility to save the table's style inside the document itself), but I couldn't find a better way for code colouring scheme, sorry for that.
Steps:
Create a 3x3 table.
Select the table, and make its borders invisible ("No Borders" option), and activate "View Gridlines" option.
Make the adjustments to cells' spacing and columns' widths to get the desired aspect. (You will have to get in "Table Properties" for fine tuning).
Create a "Paragraph Style" with the name of "Code" just for your code snippets (as mentioned in https://stackoverflow.com/a/25092977/8533804)
Create another "Paragraph Style" with the name of "Code_numberline" that will be based upon the previous created style, but this you will add a numbering line in its definition (this will automate line numbering).
Apply "Code_numberline" to the first column, and "Code" to the 3 column.
Add a fill in the middle column.
Save that table style and enjoy!

The best presentation for code in documents is in a fixed-width font (as it should appear in an IDE), with either a faint, shaded background or a light border to distinguish the block from other text.

If its Java source code copy it to Visual Studio and then copy it back to Word.

Related

Creating a textual copy of the apl language bar

I would like to embed a picture of the Dyalog APL language bar into text and PowerPoint material. How can I do that? It would be nice to be able to select and paste it.
Embed a picture - you mean this?
I would:
ALT-CTRL-PrtScn to get the bitmap image of the window in focus, then
Paste into MS-Paint, then crop off all but the wanted part, as I did here.
Alternately, some products, notably Word and Outlook, have the ability to crop the picture in-situ once you've pasted it.
Possibly PowerPoint has this feature as well.
This page has a text-based language bar you can select, copy and paste the characters from. Just note that it includes two more characters (∆⍙) at the end, not found in Dyalog's IDEs.
These are the characters on Dyalog's language bars:
← +-×÷*⍟⌹○!? |⌈⌊⊥⊤⊣⊢ =≠≤<>≥≡≢ ∨∧⍲⍱ ↑↓⊂⊃⊆⌷⍋⍒ ⍳⍸∊⍷∪∩~ /\⌿⍀ ,⍪⍴⌽⊖⍉ ¨⍨⍣.∘⍤⍥# ⍞⎕⍠⌸⌺⌶⍎⍕ ⋄⍝→⍵⍺∇& ¯⍬
Here's a way to get the actual language bar content. Just note that the solution is fundamentally fragile: Dyalog might change the way the language bar is configured, and the I-beams may be removed or changed. In particular, 4070⌶ is undocumented and thus unsupported, and might change or disappear without notice.
file←(739⌶0),'\elements.reg' ⍝ file name in temporary directory
{}⎕CMD'reg export "',(⊃4070⌶0),'\LanguageBar\Elements" "',file,'" /y' ⍝ export registry key
⊃¨0⎕JSON¨'"av char"=(.*)'⎕S'\1'⊃⎕NGET file ⍝ extract data stings and evaluate escapes
On my machine, this results in:
← +-×÷*⍟⌹○!? |⌈⌊⊥⊤⊣⊢ =≠≤<>≥≡≢ ∨∧⍲⍱ ↑↓⊂⊃⊆⌷⍋⍒ ⍳⍸∊⍷∪∩~ /\⌿⍀ ,⍪⍴⌽⊖⍉ ¨⍨⍣.∘⍤⍥# ⍞⎕⍠⌸⌺⌶⍎⍕ ⋄⍝→⍵⍺∇& ¯⍬

How can I output the code for my model into a word document without taking a screen shot?

I want to include an example of my model code within my project report. I have tried taking a screenshot of my code but it is just too long to be legible. I am therefore wondering if it is possible to output an image of my model code that has not been minimised or cut up into a word document for annotation?
(I assume the reason you don't just copy and paste is that you want to preserve the colors?)
Use “Save as Applet” on the File menu. From the resulting HTML file, cut out the applet part and just keep the code part.
Direct support for "Save as HTML" is coming in NetLogo 6.0; see https://github.com/NetLogo/NetLogo/issues/645.
If Seth guessed wrong and you just need a monospace font, you can just copy (ctrl-A,ctrl-C) in the Code tab, paste into your Word document, and set the font to any monospace font (like Courier New).
If Seth guessed correctly and you want syntax highlighting, you can get the Vim syntax file, open your NetLogo file in Vim, select the code range, and then use Vim's TOhtml command. You can then read this HTML file into your Word document.
Note that using Word for reports involving code is a terrible idea: the code will immediately be out of sync, as soon as you make further changes. Instead, learn LaTeX use the listings package to read your code into your document.

Replacing a string in Rubymine with a string with newlines

I want to use the Search and Replace dialogue in Rubymine, or something similar to replace something like "Scenario:" with "#Desktop\nScenario"
I'm trying to replace every instance of Scenario: in a large Cucumber test suite with
#desktop
Scenario:
Any best ways to do this?
Update:
Thanks to #ryan2johnson9 comment, I realise there's now an easier option (tested on 2017.3).
By clicking on the "New Line" (or using the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Enter / Alt+Enter), the input becomes multilines.
Original Answer
In the search and replace box, if you tick the "Regex" option you can do:
Search: "Scenario:"
Replace by: "#desktop\nScenario:"
The only trick is to tick the "Regex" option :)
Rubymine has macros (http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/webhelp/binding-macros-with-keyboard-shortcuts.html) but I dont think they are powerful enough for this example.
It's possible that you could solve it with some elaborate feature hidden inside Rubymine, but I think it would be a lot easier to do this with a tool like perl/sed from the Terminal. If you are using Windows I assume you could search the net and find a text search/replace tool that fits your need.
In OSX I there are a bunch of Text Substitutions app too.
I would go that route since Rubymines macro tool isnt up to the task.
Here's a cheap and sleazy alternative:
Copy a newline character from between two empty lines in the file being edited. Temporarily add two empty lines if you don't have any.
Set up search/replace and enter the string you want to replace into the search text input box.
Paste the newline you just copied into the replacement text box plus whatever other text you want. You will be able to see the height of the replacement text input box grow vertically by one line due to the newline.
Perform the search/replace.
For this, the use of the Rubymine regex is optional.

Shortcut for "code block" macro in Confluence editor

We use confluence for documentaion but i find very time consuming to select the code macro; it's a 5 step process. Even typing the macro by hand is not efficient.
In the Stack Overflow editor all we have to do is select the text and press a button or hit ctrlK, and the text is formatted as code.
Is there a way to do this in Confluence?
even typing by hand is also not efficient
I use the code macro extensively and always use the autocomplete feature by typing { and choosing 'Code Macro' from the list (It's enough to type co for the code macro).
This is a very efficient.
Of course a keyboard shortcut would be faster, but there is no shortcut for the code macro. (AFAIK there is no keyboard shortcut for a specific macro at all)
I use Ctrl-Shift-D then wrap the text in {code}.
This also fixes the problem with formatting being stripped from pasted text.
In Confluence 5.x if you edit a page, you can type {cod<enter} and it puts a Code Block box on the page, but when code is pasted into this box it can strip out end of line characters.
Open the Insert Markup window using Ctrl-Shift-D
Paste in your code as plain text This way the formatting is not stripped out.
Add {code} tags.
You can also type three back ticks ``` to create a code block as you would in vanilla Markdown. This creates an empty code block very quickly. I never have with problems with formatting when pasting code in this way.
The one irritating feature of this method is that you can't specify the language as you do in Markdown, you have to select the language from a list.

Eclipse: Automatic line wrapping to specified width

I'd like for my lines, especially within comments, to be automatically managed so they don't get too long.
I remember once I had a configuration for vim which automatically moved the word I was typing to the next line once I reached 72 characters. It wasn't smart enough to rearrange the paragraph if I edit it, but it was a start.
Is there something that can manage these for me? I have a tendency to write really long comments in my code, and it helps to make them look neat by having consistent width, but it's always a pain to do this because oftentimes editing a sentence requires editing the entire rest of the paragraph.
I have just recently discovered the Ctrl+Shift+F feature. It is amazing and superior to Ctrl+I which is what I was using up till now, but I noticed that it does not do anything to clean up my comments.
Update: The answers are correct when working with Java in Eclipse. It seems like I have to wait for the CDT to incorporate this feature.
In "Windows -> Preferences", go to "Java -> Code style -> Formatter" to customize the formatter (called when you click Ctrl+Shift+F). In the tab "comment", you can set the maximum line width for comments (it can be different then the line width for code).
Tip: in the preferences, "Java -> Editor -> Save actions", you can make Eclipse to automatically format your file when you save it, so your code is always correctly indented !
The automatic formatting of Eclipse great no question.
If your comments are reformatted depends on what comment type and how you already have inserted line breaks.
Writing for example one very long line comment starting with // will be broken down by the formatter into multiple lines.
However you later edit the formatted lines - e.g. delete parts of it the formatter will leave them as they are. Only over-long lines will be changed.
Just in difference to block comments like this: /* comment */
Those comments will always be re-formatted in case the line is too short or too long.
If you want to format your header comment, you have to check Enable header comment formatting - that was the trick for me.
Obviously, to use this, you must create new formatter profile.