I have written a number of small utilities for dealing with East Asian language text in Windows and Microsoft Office. Most of them have now been superseded by improvements in the operating system, but one may remain useful so I will make it available here. OPinYinated is a simple macro for Microsoft Word for Windows (2007 or later) that adds tone marks to text encoded with the Pinyin Romanization system for Chinese. It will scan a document for recognizable pinyin syllables followed by the digits 1 to 4, and rewrite those syllables with tone mark. For example (may not show properly if your computer does not have appropriate fonts installed): Zhong1guo2 Luo4ma3 pin1yin1 xie3fa3 ⇒ Zhōngguó Luòmǎ pīnyīn xiěfǎ.

The macro accepts the letter v in place of the vowel ü, as is standard in many Pinyin-based input systems, and can convert either an entire document (including tables, but not headers and footers) or only selected text.

To install OPinYinated, download and unzip the file below and place the resulting .dotm file it in Word’s user template folder. (This varies with the version of Word and operating system; in Windows 7 or 8, it will normally be C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\. To find the location on your computer, open File -> Options -> Trust Center -> Trusted Locations.

Download (zip file): Opinyinated

OPinYinated is adapted from a macro by Pinyin Joe (see his site for additional similar macros and instructions on Chinese-language computing).