Virginia Tech on Overleaf

Overview

Virginia Tech Libraries is providing Overleaf Professional features for all VT students, faculty 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 verify a Virginia Tech email address.

Join a community of authors at Virginia Tech

Quick Start

Welcome to the Virginia tech 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 variety 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 errors

Show your class how to turn on track changes for review

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

Find out more

Featured LaTeX Templates

Virginia Tech letterhead template

This is the official Virginia Tech letterhead template. This template is designed to be easily modified so that it can be used by anyone at VT for composing professional business communications according to the VT branding guidelines. Add your own information and text to the template to send a custom message.

Robert Browder & Carrie Cross. Modified by LianTze Lim.

Virginia Tech ETD template

This is the official Virginia Tech LaTeX template for theses and dissertations. For more information on preparing your thesis or dissertation for submission, please see the ETD LibGuide on the VT Libraries website.

Alan Lattimer & Erich L. Foster. Modified by Carrie Cross, Robert Browder & LianTze Lim

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

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

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.

Template for Preparing Your Submission to the American Society Of Civil Engineers (ASCE)Official

Overleaf and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) have created this template for authors submitting manuscripts to all 35 ASCE Journals. The template allows authors to easily prepare and edit their manuscripts using Overleaf. Once complete, authors can submit the source files downloaded from Overleaf. To begin writing online, click the “Open as Template” button above. The Overleaf/ASCE template will load. Additional guidelines for preparing submissions are included within the template. If you are new to Overleaf and LaTeX, check out this free introductory course.

Overleaf & the American Society Of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

International Journal of Recirculating Aquaculture

Template for submissions to the International Journal of Recirculating Aquaculture.

Carrie Cross

ACM Conference Proceedings Primary Article TemplateOfficial

ACM has transitioned to a new authoring template. This new TeX template (acmart v1.84) consolidates the previous eight individual ACM journal and proceedings templates. The templates are updated to the latest software versions, developed to enable accessibility features, and they use a new font set. The new LaTeX package incorporates updated versions of the following ACM templates: ACM Journals: ACM Small, ACM Large, ACM and TOG (also for SIGGRAPH authors publishing in TOG) ACM proceedings templates: ACM Standard and SIGPLAN All journals use acmsmall with the following exceptions: acmlarge - Large single column format, used for IMWUT, JOCCH, PACMPL, POMACS, TAP, PACMHCI acmtog - Large double column format, used for TOG Note: Most proceedings authors will use the "sigconf" proceedings template. If you are unsure which template variant to use, please request clarification from your event or publication contact. Important information regarding submission versions for review: After finalizing the formatting of your paper you must use the option “manuscript” with \documentclass[manuscript]{acmart} command. This will generate the output in single column review format which is required. Accepted manuscripts will be transformed during production to produce properly formatted output accord to the publication specifications. Authors will be provided the opportunity to review and approve the formatted output before the article is published to the ACM Digital Library. Before using the 2017 ACM consolidated proceedings template, we strongly suggest that you read the TeX User Guide. Authors who plan to use their own packages should read the longer Implementation Guide.

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

FAQ & Help

Who should I contact if I have questions about Overleaf or the Virginia Tech license?

If you need technical support while working on any Overleaf projects, please use our contact form and we'll make sure your question gets to the right person in our team. You can also pass along any feedback you have regarding Virginia Tech’s Overleaf license to Peter Potter, Director, Publishing Strategy, University Libraries.

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