Microsoft Equation 3.0 with Word 2013

Question

I am having a weird issue with 2 of my workstations here. Both workstations are fairly new running Windows 7 Professional 64bit and Office 2013. When I attempt to edit a equation from Word 2013, I receive the following error message: "The program used to create this object is Equation. That program is either not installed on your computer or it is not respond. To edit this object, install Equation or ensure that any dialog boxes in Equation are closed."

The steps I've attempted so far:

1. Reboot the workstation
2. Ran the compatibility install provided by Microsoft
3. Tested on older versions of Office. (Works perfectly fine on Word 2010)
4. Different user profile with administrator rights
5. Checked for Equation, found in Insert > Equation (Drop down) > Insert New Equation (This worked)
6. Changing the documents format to older versions of Word
7. Trying multiple documents that have Equations (Same issue)

Answer 1

MathType 6.9 has added support for Word 2013. To insert Microsoft Equation 3.0 Go to Insert → Object → Microsoft Equation 3.0:

MathType has a trial version.

Answer 2

The messages referring to "Equation 3.0" is shorthand for the "Microsoft Equation Editor" which was an OLE component. It was a rebranded, cut-down version of Design Science's MathType editor. OLE components are small binary programs that are loaded into an existing process (usually office/'productivity' programs) which then display an inline UI. It was popular in the 1990s as a way to allow users to "embed" content from other programs into Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, etc - this is what happens if you copy cells from an Excel spreadsheet and paste into a Word document, then double-click to edit it in-place. This technology eventually became COM (and COM+ and DCOM, led to the .NET Framework, and now is the basis for WinMD/WinRT in Windows 8 and Windows 10 - it's come a long way).

Anyway, because these components are binary programs in their own right, it means they must match the instruction-set architecture of the host process. If you're running 64-bit (AMD64) Office, then you need an AMD64 build of the Equation Editor.

...unfortunately, such a build does not exist (probably because it's too old and unmaintained to rebuild, or Microsoft doesn't have a license to the source code from Design Science anymore). So you'll need to use the 32-bit version of the Equation Editor, which only works in the 32-bit version of Office.

You can install the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office side-by-side, but I recommend instead creating a simple VM (virtual-machine) to install an older 'good' version of 32-bit Office to act as a format-bridge (Office 2010 is my personal favourite).

From within a 32-bit install of Office, you'll need to manually convert the Equation object to use Word's new Equation system - have fun, it isn't easy!