Documents Live, a web authoring and publishing system
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Table of contents
First published on Monday, Aug 18, 2025 and last modified on Saturday, Sep 19, 2026 by François Chaplais.
WebMagic
1 Import
1.1 Registered users
Regitered users can upload and import to Documents Live
- a zip archive of a LaTeX project
- a zip archive of a Markdown file
You can also convert Microsoft Office documents to LaTeX using the Pandoc command line tool .
1.2 Subscribers
Subscribers can directly upload and import
- Microsoft Office files
- Jupyter notebooks
- un-zipped Markdown files
Office documents are converted to LaTeX using a PHP port of the Pandoc package.
1.3 Office documents support
1.3.1 Word
Styling and common block types are handled as expected. Color is supported.
Word equations are translated to LaTeX equations.
1.3.2 Excel
Each table is both inserted as a plain LaTeX table and as a Documents Live CSV table . Before upload, make sure that the tables have the following format:
- a header row
- data rows below
If your Excel file contains charts, they are imported as native Documents Live charts .
Images are also imported.
1.3.3 Powerpoint
Powerpoint documents are imported as native Documents Live sliders in a new document.
2 Export
2.1 Registered users
All registered users can create a fully functional Documents Live web page for each document. If the user is not a subscriber, only one document can be made public. Others as kept as drafts.
Documents can be also downloaded as a zipped complete LaTeX project.
2.2 Subscribers
Subscribers can export their documents as Microsoft Word documents. LaTeX equations are translated to Word equations.
The can also export to PDF files. Note that, in this export, equations are not supported.
Documents can be exported to Markdown files; users can also copy directly the Markdown to the clipboard.
2.3 Word and PDF export options
Users can define multiple export options for Word and PDF exports. These option mainly define the fonts that will be used for the exported documents.
Options are created in the user account settings, and are configued for each document. If no option is selected, the exporter will use default settings.
Word fonts must be present in the target system for Word export. For PDF export, users can select Google fonts .
Word templates
Word exports can be embedded in a pre-existing Word document. This Word document can be uploaded in the user’s settings. After that, it can be incorporated in a Word export option in the user’s settings.
The Word document MUST contain the $DOCUMENT$ string. If this document has been chosen as a template in a Word export options, the resulting exported Word document will be the original template where the previous string has been replaced by the document content.
This is especially useful for document branding.