Automatically convert Pinyin with tone numbers
to Pinyin with tone marks (diacritics)

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Downloads

*Not Compatible with Office for Mac 2008 or Apple iWork. See FAQ for more info.

Pinyin Macro Instructions
OverviewUse The Right FontInstallationRuby Text

Pinyin Macro Help
FAQs & Technical NotesContact Information

Overview

These macros are very simple to use, as easy as '1-2-3':

1. Type Pinyin with numbers representing the tones, as in 'Han4yu3 Pin1yin1'.
2. Select the text or document you want to convert.
3. Run the macro. Done.

To run macros, in Word or Excel for Windows press <alt-F8> or add the macro to your Quick Access Toolbar. In Office for Mac, go to Tools > Macros. In Libre/OpenOffice, go to Tools > Macros > Run Macro..

Use The Right Font

To use this macro, the only other thing to remember is that you'll need to select a font that includes letters with these diacritics. Otherwise you may find that in each word the one letter with a tone will be in a different font.

In Ubuntu Linux, I've found the default Liberation Serif and the other 'Liberation' fonts do not have everything we need, but Free Sans, DejaVu Sans, DejaVu Serif, 'Ubuntu' and many others look great. Starting with 16.04 / Xerus, Ubuntu includes the Google Chinese font Noto Sans CJK (also available for other systems as a free download under that name or as Adobe Source Han Sans), and that font also includes all the letters with diacritics we require for Hanyu Pinyin tones.

Macs have had Unicode fonts for years. Not every font on a Mac will have these letters, but worrying about Unicode fonts is mostly a Windows thing these days, and Microsoft is getting better and better about that too.

In Windows, use one of these:

*Windows Office 2010 and later versions include all of these fonts, but Calibri and Cambria did not include all the necessary characters in Office 2007 until I installed Office Multi-Language Pack 2007.

Office XP (2002) and 2003 include the latest Arial, Courier New and Times New Roman, and those editions also normally install the Arial Unicode MS font as the 'Universal Font', also known as the 'Unicode Font' as part of International Support.

In Office 2000 that font is an option. If you did not install it, for either XP 2002/2003 or 2000, follow the instructions for 'Installing the Unicode Font' on Microsoft's 'Administering Fonts for Office XP' page.

Installation

Click one of the download links at the top of this page, and copy/extract the file to your PC.

To install in Microsoft Office, open Word or Excel and in Windows press <alt-F8>, or on a Mac go to Tools > Macros. Type a name for the macro and hit the 'Create' button. Then open the downloaded file, select all the text and copy it into a blank macro. Note my instructions in each macro on exactly where and how to paste it, especially the part about the 'sub' and 'end sub' lines. 99 times out of 100, the reason a macro doesn't work will be a mistake pasting it in during this step.

The MS Office Help files on this topic are actually are pretty good. Open Help, enter 'macro' in the Help index, and drill down to info on creating a macro 'from scratch'. (Note that Excel can be especially difficult about security: you must enable macros, and in recent versions of Excel you must save your final spreadsheet as a macro-enabled file.)

To install in OpenOffice or LibreOffice, go to Tools > Macros > Organize Macros > LibreOffice (or OpenOffice) Basic to create a macro and paste in my code. Here's a link to someone offering more detailed help: 5 Steps to Creating an OpenOffice Macro. In his step 5, instead of writing a macro you would paste in one of mine, making sure to follow my instructions in the macro comments about deleting the 'sub Main' and 'end sub' lines automatically created for any new blank macro.

When running these macros in OOo or LibrO, if you get a message saying you need a 'Java runtime environment' (JRE), that has nothing to do with me and you can run macros without it, but I know how to make that annoyance go away in Linux: install OpenJDK Java Runtime. This is easy in Ubuntu. Open Software Center, search for LibreOffice, click the 'More Info' button, scroll down to find OpenJDK Java Runtime, select it and click the 'Apply changes' button above.

The Help files on this topic included with Open/LibreOffice are not very detailed, but there is some information there. Look under 'Macros' (plural) and click through 'Organize Macros' to 'LibreOffice Basic'.

See also the Troubleshooting section of the Pinyin macro FAQ page. If you get ambitious, the Help files in the Basic editors (launched when you click the 'Edit' button in the macro dialog) can help you add tweaks of your own. For example, you can tell the MS Word macro to search forward from your cursor instead of backwards by setting '.Forward=' to 'True', or you can remove that feature entirely.

Ruby Text

Although you can use this macro to create 'ruby' text (small phonetic transcriptions aligned above or alongside Chinese characters), there is an easier way: there are inexpensive Chinese character fonts available that include Pinyin ruby text, and there are the Phonetic Guide features of Word and Writer. With any of these options you'll have to input the Chinese characters first of course. See this section of my Zhuyin setup page for more information on Zhuyin and Pinyin ruby fonts, and Microsoft Word's Phonetic Guide, and this a brief discussion of Phonetic Guide in LibreOffice/OpenOffice (in my Ubuntu Linux section, but there is also a version of OpenOffice for Windows), which someone is trying to automate by developing an an extension called OOPinyinGuide.

Need More Help?

Please see the Troubleshooting section on the macro FAQ page, and feel free to send send questions, comments or suggestions anytime via the contact page.

Chinese and Cantonese Input Method User Guide

With the Pinyin - Traditional input source, you can enter Traditional Chinese characters using Pinyin phonetic input codes.

Enter Chinese characters using Pinyin - Traditional

1. On your Mac, first set up the input source (add Pinyin - Traditional and, if desired, Handwriting - Traditional).

2. Click the Input menu in the menu bar, then do one of the following:

   • Choose Pinyin - Traditional to use the keyboard.

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     If your Mac has a Touch Bar and you customized the Control Strip to add the Input Sources button , tap it to select Pinyin - Traditional.

   • Choose Handwriting - Traditional to use the trackpad.

     If your Mac has a Touch Bar and you customized the Control Strip to add the Handwriting button , tap it to select Handwriting - Traditional. See Use Trackpad Handwriting to write Chinese.

3. In an app, do any of the following:

   • Enter Pinyin: Type the input codes for the characters you want to use, then select the characters in the Candidate window. For example, to enter 蘋果公司, type “pingguogongsi”, then select candidates in the window.

   • Enter Full Pinyin (Quanpin): Toolchains for eclipse mac. Type the input codes for the characters you want to use, then select the characters in the Candidate window. For example, to enter 西安, type “xi’an”, then select 西安 in the window.

     Use an apostrophe to separate syllables that have ambiguous parsings. Full Pinyin has modifications that make typing more convenient; for example, “v” is used to replace “ü” (so to enter 綠, you would type “lv”).

   • Enter Abbreviated Pinyin (Jianpin): Type the consonant of each syllable in an input code, then select characters in the Candidate window. For example, to enter 蘋果公司 (the input codes are ping, guo, gong, and si), type “pggs”. Or, to enter 計算機, type “jsj” (the input code is “jisuanji”).

     You can use both full and abbreviated Pinyin in the same conversion. For example, if you type “pingguogs” with “gongsi” abbreviated to “gs”, the result is still “蘋果公司”.

   • Enter Structural Pinyin (Chaizi): Type a Chaizi input code with two or more syllables, then press Shift-Space bar. For example, type “jiji”, then press Shift-Space bar. The Candidate window opens, and the first candidates shown in the Composition pane are 喆, 兓, and 旣.

     With structural Pinyin, each syllable of the input sequence is treated as the Pinyin for one of the components in the character (in order from left to right and top to bottom).

   • Enter English words: Enter an English word, then select the word in the Candidate window. For example, type “ipad”, then select the word in the window. Proper nouns are automatically capitalized.

   • Show the keyboard layout: Click the Input menu in the menu bar, then choose Show Keyboard Viewer.

     If the menu item isn’t shown, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, click Keyboard, then select “Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar.”

Enter Chinese characters using Stroke with Pinyin - Traditional

1. On your Mac, first set up the input source (add Pinyin - Traditional and, if desired, Handwriting - Traditional).

2. Click the Input menu in the menu bar, then do one of the following:

   • Choose Pinyin - Traditional to use the keyboard.

     If your Mac has a Touch Bar and you customized the Control Strip to add the Input Sources button , tap it to select Pinyin - Traditional.

   • Choose Handwriting - Traditional to use the trackpad.

     If your Mac has a Touch Bar and you customized the Control Strip to add the Handwriting button , tap it to select Handwriting - Traditional. See Use Trackpad Handwriting to write Chinese.

3. In an app, use a prefix key (u), followed (without a space) by the stroke input code for a character. For example, you can type the following:

   Stroke within Pinyin	Keyboard key
   一	H
   丨	S
   丿	P
   丶(乀)	N
   乛(乙)	Z
   *wildcard	X

   If you type “unnzzsh”, you get 字 as the first candidate.

You can also add words to your user dictionary to save time when you need to type the same word again.

You may need to change preferences, for example, to show predictive completions or to change the orientation of the Candidate window.