Chem4Word – A Chemistry Add-on for Microsoft Word Users
March 31, 2010Microsoft Research has just released a new add-in that lets you embed, display, index, and edit chemical structures in Word 2007 and Word 2010 documents. With the add-in, you can type in a common or IUPAC name for a compound and automatically display it as a chemical formula or a 2D chemical structure. You can then edit the structure.
According to the help files, the add-in includes a library of “several hundred” common molecules (although only 7 appear in the Chemistry Gallery). If you have or can write a CML (chemical markup language) representation of other molecules, you can import them into your library.
2D structures are inserted into the document as PNG images so the Chem4Word add-in isn’t required for others to view your document.
There are also facilities for tagging and indexing structures used within a document.
Watch a 3-minute demo of the add-in.
Download the beta version of the add-in. Microsoft’s research blog promises that the add-in will be released later this year as an open-source project under an Apache license.
You’ll need Visual Studio Tools for Office 3.0 Runtime SP1 to run the add-in. If you don’t have that installed, the installer will ask you if you want to download and install it.
Molecular Sieve is the work blog of 
Looking forward to Microsoft’s products ！