ME 402: How to Insert MATLAB Figures in MS-Word Documents
It is not trivial to embed figures in MS-Word in a way that produces good results. The instructions below
contrast two ways to do this.
The Easy Way
The easiest way to embed a MATLAB figure is to simply copy the figure (in the MATLAB figure window
go to Edit->Copy Figure) and then paste into Word directly.
Figure 1: This is illustrates one way to embed a figure. Note the figure is of poor quality and the caption
is not aligned with the figure.
A Better Way
The method is more complex, but in the long run it makes the figures much easier to deal with,
especially when you start dealing with larger documents.
1. Print the MATLAB figure to a file
1.1. You can do this from the MATLAB figure window by going to File->Save As and then given the
file a name. The PNG format works well for MATLAB figures.
1.2. An even better way to save a high-resolution file of the figure is to use the print() function.
(See help print in MATLAB)
print(figure(1),'-dpng','-r300','my_figure')
The above command prints figure 1 as my_figure.png with a resolution of 300 dpi
2. Create a textbox in Word to hold the figure and the caption
2.1. In Word, go to Insert->Text Box->Simple Textbox
2.2. Right-click on the border of the text box and select Format Text Box
2.3. This should open a dialog box. In the dialog box click the Layout tab and select In Line with Text
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Temperature [
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Step Response of First-Order System
Numerical
Analytical
SteadyState
63.2%