Chemistry Add-In for Microsoft Word

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Tutorial 4 – Using the Chemistry Navigator in Chem4Word

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This video tutorial shows you how to use the Chemistry Navigator in the Chem4Word addin.

Here’s the video

Step-by-step

  • You can click the Chemistry ribbon’s “Navigator” button to see all of the chemistry in a Microsoft Word document.
  • Users can choose whether to show structures or chemical formulae in the Navigator.
  • Using the Navigator, you can insert linked or unlinked copies of any chemistry into the document.
  • You can choose how these linked copies are displayed in a document;.
  • Chemistry can be displayed as 2D Structures, Chemical Names,Chemical Formulae or any other labels you have created.
  • Users can update all of the linked copies of a chemistry object by editing one of the copies.
  • You can select any chemistry in a document and change the way it is displayed using the View button in the Chemistry ribbon,

You now know how to use the Chemistry Navigator to insert linked copies of chemistry and how to change how these are displayed in your Word documents!

Learn more

There are other ways to reuse structures that you’ve already drawn.  The next tutorial will shows you how to use the Chemistry Gallery to re-use chemistry in other Word documents..

Get your copy of the Chemistry Addin for Microsoft Word from the download page.

Tutorial 3 – Add a structure from PubChem to a document using Chem4Word

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This video tutorial shows you how to add a structure from a PubChem search to a Microsoft Word document using the Chem4Word addin.

Here’s the video

Step-by-step

  • Clicking the Chemistry ribbon’s “Import” button allows us to search PubChem for structures, rather than having to draw them manually.
  • Type a seach term, such as a common name or IUPAC name for the chemistry you want to include in the document.
  • Select the correct compound from the list of results from the search.
  • Click the OK button and Chem4Word will search ChemSpider to see if we can find a name for your structure, that you can use that name elsewhere in your document;  we’ll show you how in a separate tutorial.
  • Edit the structure if you want to remove excessive hydrogen atoms that may have been drawn.  Sometimes, structure files in PubChem represent all hydrogen atoms explicitly,

You now have your first structure from PubChem in your Microsoft Word document!

Learn more

We can show chemistry as 2D structures, formulae or chemical names.  The next tutorial shows you how to change the way that chemistry is represented in Microsoft Word documents that were created using the Chem4Word addin.

Get your copy of the Chemistry Addin for Microsoft Word from the download page.

Tutorial 2 – Edit a structure in a document using Chem4Word

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This video tutorial shows you how to edit an existing structure in a Microsoft Word document using the Chem4Word addin.

Here’s the video

Step-by-step

  • Double-clicking a structure will open a structure editor in which you can edit your structure.
  • You can edit the currently selected structure by clicking the “Edit” button on the Chemistry ribbon.
  • Click the OK button and Chem4Word will search ChemSpider to see if we can find a name for your structure, that you can use that name elsewhere in your document;  we’ll show you how in a separate tutorial.
  • Edit the name that was found or just leave it as it is

You now have edited your first structure in your Microsoft Word document!

Learn more

We can add structures to documents in other ways.  The next tutorial shows you how to add chemistry from a Pubchem search.

Get your copy of the Chemistry Addin for Microsoft Word from the download page.

Tutorial 1 – Draw a structure in a document using Chem4Word

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This video tutorial shows you how to draw a structure in a Microsoft Word document using the Chem4Word addin.

Here’s the video

Step-by-step

  • Clicking the Chemistry ribbon’s “Draw Structure” button to open a structure editor in which you can draw your structure.
  • Click the OK button and Chem4Word will search ChemSpider to see if we can find a name for your structure, that you can use that name elsewhere in your document;  we’ll show you how in a separate tutorial.
  • Edit the name that was found or just leave it as it is

You now have your first structure in your Microsoft Word document!

Learn more

There are other ways to add a structure to a Microsoft Word document using the Chem4Word addin, and we’ll show you these over the coming weeks. The next tutorial shows you how to edit existing structures in Microsoft Word documents that were created using the Chem4Word addin.

Get your copy of the Chemistry Addin for Microsoft Word from the download page.

Chem4Word – Usage data collection

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There are lots of software products out there that collect ‘usage’ data and many of us simply accept the terms and conditions without giving it  a thought.  Chem4Word is no exception, but I thought that I would share some of it back with you!

The current beta release has been collecting information about Office version, operating system and IP address as well as other bits of data to see which parts of the addin you actually use.

CDataMike wrote some software to extract this data from the data tables in which they are stored and Clyde then used Knime to extract useful information.  I wondered whether it would be possible to extract the data directly into Knime to make the process simpler.  After a bit of searching, I found a JDBC driver (http://www.cdata.com/drivers/azure/jdbc/) written to connect directly to Azure table storage; exactly what I needed.  The evaluation version worked brilliantly and after a short email discussion, CData kindly donated a license to use this driver to the project team.  Thanks CData! We really appreciate your help!

KnimeSo, what can we do with the data, now that we’ve extracted it and processed it with Knime.  With the IP address, we can use a free lookup service (http://freegeoip.net/)  to get a city location and Knime has a node that allows us to automate this.  We can then use an Open Source Maps node in Knime to automatically show these locations on a world map!  It is really interesting to see how widely the addin is used across the world, but we’re still waiting for a user in Antarctica!

What is more usetul to us is to know what version of Microsoft Word is being used with the addin.

Supporting multiple versions of Word means we have to maintain multiple versions of the code that produces the images in the addin.  So, what have we found?

We’ll publish more data as we go on, and show you more views of the data that is so valuable to us in understanding how you use the Chemistry addin for Microsoft Word.