Many users become concerned when their equations in Word are replaced with empty boxes. Double clicking these blank areas will launch MathType and display the equation in that location, and the equations will print correctly, but they cannot be viewed in Microsoft Word.

This information applies to:

MathType 3.0/3.1 (Win & Mac) Microsoft Word 6 (Mac)
MathType 3.5 (Win) Microsoft Word 95 (Win)
MathType 3.6 (Mac) Microsoft Word 97 (Win)
MathType 4.0 (Win) Microsoft Word 98 (Mac)
Equation Editor 1-3 (Win & Mac) Microsoft Word 2000 (Win)
                                                                       
The reason why this occurs is:

There is actually a feature in Microsoft Word called Picture Placeholders. The Picture Placeholders option helps to minimize the amount of computer resources required to display a page and helps Word scroll multiple pages faster on-screen.  Depending on what your situation is it may be possible to toggle this setting so that the equations in your document display on-screen again.

Solution

As this is a feature of Word, it is advisable to follow the instructions listed in your Microsoft Word manual or on-line help file for resolutions to this issue. Typically you can do a word search for "Picture Placeholders" in the index of the manual or in the Find tab of Word's on-line help manual. The information contained in the manual and on-line help supersedes this notice.

If you find that ALL of the objects (equations, clipart, charts, graphs, etc.) in your document are not being displayed in your document, chances are that you have Word's Picture Placeholders option enabled. To toggle this option, do the following:

1) Launch Word.
2) Select Options (Win) or Preferences (Mac) from the Tools menu of Word.
3) Click on the View tab.
4) Uncheck the box for Picture Placeholders.
5) Press OK.

If this was the cause, unchecking this option will cause all the objects in the document to be displayed again. If the objects are still not visible then ensure that the 'Field Codes' option in Words Tools, Options, View  menu is not checked.

If you find that equations in the beginning portion of your document are displayed, but that equations towards the end of the document aren't, it is most likely caused by your machine not having enough free resources available to display all of the expressions. As a result, Word automatically will disable the display of these objects. To get around this situation, you can do one (or more) of the following:

1) Close any running applications other than Word to free up some memory.
2) Split the document into multiple smaller documents.
3) Add additional memory to your machine; remember, Windows 95/98/NT requires a minimum of 32 MB. Anything else you have running (such as virus checkers, screen savers, etc.) will use additional memory.