Laowai Chinese 老外中文

Wanted: Convert Tone Numbers in Microsoft Word

2010 March 25 – 7:12 am | Categories: Computer| Leave a comment

What I’ve got is a document in Microsoft Word that contains Pinyin words with tone numbers, for example:

Hi everyone.
大家好.
da4jia1 hao3.

So I want to highlight the WHOLE DOCUMENT, click a button, and see this:

Hi everyone.
大家好.
dàjiā hǎo.

In other words, it ignores everything without a number, and converts everything with a number to pinyin tones (I know that could convert things I don’t want converted but I’m willing to deal with that).

I’ve already got (as seen in the sidebar under Links > Resources – Pinyin):

Convert: zhong1wen2 -> zhōngwén – but you’ve got to copy/paste stuff from the document and the worst thing is that you loose all your paragraph returns.
Type pīnyīn with tone marks – but you’ve got to type in the numbers, it doesn’t convert numbers that are already there (I used this to create the above dàjiā hǎo)
FireFox Extension: zhong1 -> zhōng converter – I need it everywhere (especially MS Word)

Anyone have any suggestions?

By the way, has anyone done an analysis of the Zhonglish in this clip yet? If so, great! That’ll save me the trouble. If not, please do! I’d rather read it than write it.

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14 Responses to “Wanted: Convert Tone Numbers in Microsoft Word”
林 said:

Perhaps this macro is what you’re looking for: http://goo.gl/kLAV

Comment date: Mar 25, 2010
Mihaly said:

Here is a very quick and dirty macro hack for OpenOffice.org: http://www.cs.elte.hu/~klao/pinyin/

Unfortunately, I don’t have microsoft word. But it shouldn’t be much harder to create something similar for it.

If you have openoffice and wont to try it out, download the pinyin_test.odt and open it. (It will complain that there are macros in the document, but that’s the point, isn’t it? )
Then, Tools -> Macros -> Run Macro… -> chose pinyin_test.odt -> Standard -> Pinyin -> Run.

If you like it, you can in macro organizer drag the macro from this document to “My Macros -> Standard” and it will be available to you in every document.

Comment date: Mar 25, 2010
Max said:

Haven’t tested it, but I just happened to stumble upon: http://www.pinyinjoe.com/pinyin/pinyin_macro.htm
Give it a try

Comment date: Mar 25, 2010
Ron Raffensperger said:

This site still requires cut/paste, but keeps your paragraph marks. http://www.chineselearnonline.com/pinyin-conversion-tool

“Plug-ins” for MS Word are a fairly small niche market, but maybe you can find a tech student who would want to do this.

Comment date: Mar 25, 2010
Gus said:

I have used Pinyin Joe’s macro (that 林 and Max suggested above) on a textbook project and it worked like a charm.

Comment date: Mar 25, 2010
gweipo said:

If you don’t care whether the pinyin with tone marks is above or below the characters, just select the character and highlight it / them, and then select “format; asian layout; phonetic guide” you’ll then see the characters and pinyin. As far as I know it’s only on top.

You can go to
http://newton.uor.edu/Departments&Programs/AsianStudiesDept/Language/chinese_write.htm

for more detailed information. You need to have asian languages enabled in windows for example!

Comment date: Mar 25, 2010
Amanda said:

Have you tried using the phonetic guide within Word itself? If you have the characters typed into your Word doc you dont need to type the pinyin at all. The following is copied from MS Word help.

Add phonetic guides to text
The feature described in this Help topic is only available if support for an East Asian language is enabled through Microsoft Office Language Settings.

Note To use phonetic guides with Simplified Chinese text, you must use the Simplified Chinese IME 98 or IME 2000. To use tone marks with Simplified Chinese text, you must use the Simplified Chinese IME 2000.

Select the text to which you want to add phonetic guides.
On the Format menu, point to Asian Layout, and then click Phonetic Guide.
In the Ruby text box, enter the phonetic guides that you want to apply to the selected text.
Do any of the following:
To change the font or font size, select the option you want in the Font or Size box.
To change the alignment, select the option you want in the Alignment box.
To change the offset from the base text, select the distance you want in the Offset box.

Comment date: Mar 25, 2010
MIKE N0MM said:

Reference to Tones un typing Pinyin:
Came across this on a search for a Mac solution (OS X)
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/21836/qim

I have not tried it out yet but it seems promising for us that choose to “pass Windows!”

MIKE

Comment date: Mar 25, 2010
Albert said:

First of all, thanks very much to gweipo and Amanda for showing me that built in Asian Phonetic guide (Format > Asian Layout > Phonetic Guide). That is very cool. Unfortunately it’s only a Hanzi > Pinyin converter, and I’ve already got the pinyin with the tone marks in the document. But I’d seen that before and always wondered how they did that. Thanks!

That brings me to Pinyin Joe’s plugin: it’s great. I’ll be adding it to my resources link on the side. Thanks so much everyone.

Comment date: Apr 3, 2010
Michael said:

Sorry i can;t help you out on this one. WOW! i never knew about some of these tools before. I have been stupidly cutting and pasting individually from Wenlin for the past while.
Cheers for the resources

Comment date: Apr 5, 2010
Chi Chi said:

大家好,

I came across your blog recently. I’m Chinese but immigrated to a different country when I was young so I’ve never had the chance to learn Chinese. I have always had a communication barrier with my parents. It’s improved quite a bit though, but I’m thinking of learning to type. I’ve just read your post on How to Type PinYin with tone markers and will hopefully soon be able to write emails to my family in China.

Thanks so much for the insightful posts.

Comment date: Apr 11, 2010
dawei said:

This is the best one that I’ve come across by far…

http://pinyinput.sourceforge.net/

Comment date: Jun 12, 2011
gweipo said:

Pinyin Joes Macro works wonderfully both in Word and in Excel, both on Mac and PC.
Would recommend it highly.

Comment date: Jun 15, 2011