Back in September of this year, I’d published an article that showcased improvements that had been made to Adobe InDesign’s MathML panel. Since writing that article, a significant improvement has been to this tool as part of the release of Adobe InDesign CC 2026. That improvement is the ability to cut and paste an equation from Microsoft Word into Adobe InDesign and have it import as a MathML object.

How it works

In Microsoft Word, click on the equation to select it, and then click on the dropdown to the right so that the equation is highlighted. A contextual menu will appear, but click on the dropdown arrow again so the menu disappears, and when you can see the equation is now fully highlighted, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + C (or Cmd + C) to copy it to the clipboard.

Navigate back to InDesign and making sure the black arrow tool is selected, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + V (or Cmd + V) to paste the equation directly into InDesign.

The newly pasted object is now in InDesign as a MathML object.

Before anybody races to the commenting section saying “it isn’t an exact copy”, yes I know… I said this was an improvement – not a revolution. Yes, there are differences, such as:

• The color has changed;
• The font has changed; and
• The italics have been lost in places.

Can I edit it with the updated MathML panel?

Yes, in one of two ways.

First Way – easiest way

Let’s say I want to adjust the newly imported equation to change 8.99 to 8.94. If I change my tool from the black arrow tool to the text tool, I can now place my cursor and make changes, or highlight characters and make larger changes.

As mentioned in my last MathML article, the interface is less intuitive and somewhat frustrating. To make the change in the above image, it took a few goes to make the change without inadvertently changing other parts of the equation. The easiest way was to highlight the portion I wanted to change using my cursor keys, and then type in the new value.

Second way – expert level

The second way is to select the equation with your black arrow tool and in the MathML panel, click the Edit MathML button.

This will now open the actual MathML code editor so that the change can be made there.

I can scroll down to the portion of the code that contains what I’d like to change, and when I make the change, an alert tells me to update the preview with the >> button. I click on that and the preview updates, so I can now click the Save button to save the alterations to the graphic.

Will this work if I place the document rather than cut and paste?

Sadly, no. As mentioned before, this is an improvement – not a revolution. If you have a Microsoft Word document with lots of equations made with its modern equation editor, then these will not import.

What if I copy a block of text rather than just one equation?

Copying a block of text from Microsoft Word that contains several equations behaves differently again. Take this block of copied text.

If I paste this into InDesign, this is what appears:

Note that one equation came in correctly, but the other two did not. Note that the equations also came in as embedded EPS objects.

What happens if I unembed the link?

I can’t edit it with the MathML editor, but I can edit it with Adobe Illustrator. Let’s try that.

Adobe Illustrator launches, but after an ominous font warning, this is what I end up with:

If I go back into InDesign and export the page as a PDF, I could then open it with Illustrator and have no missing fonts… but that’s because the type has all been outlined. Looking closer at the fonts, they also appear to have been ‘broken’.

It’s still an improvement

Compared to where the community was a year prior to the writing of this article, the MathML features have certainly improved.

Again, I’m also in complete agreement with David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepcion with their thoughts on what remains to be improved with this feature, namely:

• Ability to change the font;
• Ability to change the color and have that color be correct – without workarounds;

I’d also like InDesign to handle equations consistently from Microsoft Word, as they can import in several ways as demonstrated in this article, such as:

• A MathML object (when one equation only is copied);
• Unembedded EPS graphics that may/may not resemble what was in the Word file (when a block of text is copied); or
• Nothing at all (when the Word document containing the equations is placed).

This last paragraph is for the InDesign developers who have been implementing this tool. The MathML panel has certainly improved since its first iteration, and the 2026 release is further improvement. However, there is still work to be done before calling this feature complete, and I hope that future iterations of the panel will overcome the issues faced by users at the time of writing. You’ve done well, but there’s still more to do.