Files that should not be included in a project

Including some file types in a project can cause conflicts with Overleaf's LaTeX compilation/build process, be a source of confusion, or contribute unecessarily towards project file limits.

Best practice: only include files required to compile your project

An Overleaf project should not be used to store additional resources related to your project, such as PDFs of articles that you are referencing, or other documents. The contents of your Overleaf project should just be the "source" files that are needed to compile the PDF output.

Best practice: do not upload a copy of the compiled PDF

Overleaf does not add the compiled PDF to your project's source files. The PDF is always regenerated and downloaded separately.

If you include a copy of the PDF in your source files, this can cause confusion, as this original version of the PDF will never be overwritten by Overleaf's compile process. The older PDF that you add to your project will remain, and may potentially cause confusion when downloaded or viewed.

To avoid confusion we recommend that PDF files with the same name as your local project's main .tex file be removed from your local project prior to upload.

You can download the up-to-date PDF by clicking on the "Download PDF" button near the "Recompile button" or, alternatively, click on the Overleaf menu on the upper-left and then "Download PDF".

Local project files to remove before uploading a ZIP file to Overleaf

• *.aux (unless you're using the xr package)

• Table of contents, list of figures/tables:*.toc, *.lof, *.lot

• References and citations auxiliary and output files *.bbl (unless you are not using a .bib file and rely on the .bbl only), *.bcf, *.blg

• Beamer auxiliary files *.snm, *.out, *.nav, *.vrb

• Glossaries/nomenclature/acronyms *.ind, *.ilg,*.ist (unless it's your custom index style file), *.glg,*.gls, *.glo, *.acn, *.acr, *.alg

• SyncTeX file *.synctex.gz

• latexmk auxiliary files files*.run.xml, *.fls

• Other generated file extensions created by various packages.

Manually uploading these files into your project list may cause problems with the build tool, especially *.run.xml!

Git folders and files

Uploading .git folders can cause problems when working with the Git integration or GitHub Synchronization.