UCL on Overleaf

Overview

Overleaf Professional features are available for all UCL students and staff who would like to use a collaborative, online LaTeX editor for their projects. Overleaf Professional features include real-time track changes, unlimited collaborators, and full document history.

Overleaf is designed to make the process of writing, editing and producing your research papers and project reports much quicker for both you and your collaborators. Overleaf can also be linked to other services to best fit into your workflow.

Claim your Overleaf Professional upgrade by signing up (or signing in) below. You’ll need to link your account to your UCL single sign on.

Overleaf must not be used to share confidential data, check here to see if your data is confidential. Always follow UCL’s guidance on data protection.

Join a community of authors at UCL

Quick Start

Welcome to the quick start guide to Overleaf. We've put together some useful resources and links in the sections below, and if you have any questions about how to get started please let us know and we'll be happy to help!

For Students

Try out the Overleaf editor with built in tutorial

If you'd like to dive straight into the editor, simply click the button to create a new paper using our quick-start template. A short tutorial will walk you through the main features to quickly get you started.

Create a new paper

Browse the Overleaf template gallery

You can find a selection of featured templates, or check out our full template gallery for more ideas and inspiration.

Go to the template gallery

Take our free course to quickly master the LaTeX essentials

If you're new to LaTeX, we've put together a free online course to help you learn the basics. If you have never used LaTeX before, or if it has been a while and you would like a refresher, this is the place to start.

Teach me LaTeX!

For Researchers

Find a journal template

Through our partnerships within the publishing community, we provide a selection of academic journal templates for articles and papers. These templates automatically format your manuscripts in the style required for submission to that journal.

View the academic journal templates

Edit in Rich Text mode or directly in LaTeX

Overleaf provides an intuitive and easy-to-use manuscript editor (our rich text mode), which is especially useful if you or your co-authors aren't familiar with writing in LaTeX.

Open editor in
Rich Text mode

If you prefer to edit directly in LaTeX, you can! Overleaf provides a full collaborative online LaTeX editor you can switch to at any time.

Open in LaTeX mode

Submitting your articles to journals, repositories and more

You can also submit your paper directly to a number of journals and other editorial and review services via the publish menu in the editor. Simply open the publish menu from any document and follow the appropriate 'Submit to ...' link.

View the article submission guide

For Teachers

Introducing Students to LaTeX

Overleaf has several on-demand webinars available that address a variet of beginner, intermediate, and advanced topics

Check out our on-demand webinars

Help students understand LaTeX errors

Addressing errors as they happen helps ensure that your LaTeX project continues to compile and look the way it should.

Learn to recognize common LaTeX errors

Show your class how to turn on track changes for review

Overleaf offers an impressive collection of new and upgraded collaboration features, and your institutional subscription provides all users with access to the powerful track changes feature.

Find out more

Featured LaTeX Templates

Basic Academic Journal Article Template

This is a basic journal article template which includes metadata fields for multiple authors, affiliations and keywords. It is also set up to use the lineno package for line numbers; these can be turned on by adding the 'lineno' option to the documentclass command.

John Hammersley

A quick guide to LaTeX

Know the LaTeX command you want to use but can't remember how to write it? Here we present a great tips sheet produced by Dave Richeson; it's pre-loaded in Overleaf so you can see how the commands work instantly. Simply click on the button above to open a version in Overleaf for editing (and to quickly copy and paste the commands you need!). For more comments visit this page on Dave's site, or if you'd like to work through a fuller introduction to LaTeX why not check out our free online course?

Example by Division by Zero

Book design inspired by Edward Tufte

Edward Tufte is a pioneer in the field of data visualization, and his works inspired the creation of two LaTeX classes for books and handouts. Here we present the excellent sample book produced by the The Tufte-LaTeX Developers pre-loaded into Overleaf (formerly writeLaTeX) for you to use as a starting point for your own work. Simply click the button above to use Overleaf to create and edit your article - there's nothing to install and no sign up required. When you're finished, use our integrated publish to figshare option to publish your work freely online. Click here if you'd like to try the corresponding Tufte handout design on Overleaf. PS: If you're new to LaTeX, our free online LaTeX course covers all the steps you need to get you started.

Example by The Tufte-LaTeX Developers

Standard document

A4 document with page numbering and adjusted margins. Included options for gentium and times font, as well as language.

Christian L.

Metropolis Beamer Theme

Metropolis is originally created by Matthias Vogelgesang and is available from https://github.com/matze/mtheme as well as CTAN. More information about the theme, including the design principles, can be found at http://bloerg.net/2014/09/20/a-modern-beamer-theme.html. This version demonstrates the use of a progress bar under the frame titles. See the manual for other customisation options.

Matthias Vogelgesang

FAQ & Help

Who should I contact if I have questions about Overleaf?

Please use our contact form and we'll make sure your question gets to the right person in our team.

Who should I contact if I have problems logging in?.

Please contact Overleaf support if you run into any trouble logging in or accessing your Overleaf account. Note that the email address you register with Overleaf should be your usual UCL email address, rather than your UCL user id.

Please see this page for more information about institutional login to Overleaf.

I'm new to Overleaf, how should I get started?

We've put together a short How do I use Overleaf help page to give you pointers on exactly that :)

How do I upload an existing LaTeX project into Overleaf?

Here's an FAQ on how to import existing LaTeX documents into Overleaf.

What packages does Overleaf support?

Overleaf supports the packages listed here.

Search our FAQ for more help