Resolving access, loading, and display problems

As with other online services, you can sometimes run into problems when using Overleaf. Browser state, browser extensions, brief outages of service providers, and network configuration issues can potentially cause problems. If you are experiencing connection issues, or if part of the editor or PDF viewer is not loading or displaying as expected, please try the following troubleshooting steps. These steps can often resolve a problem or help identify what the cause of the problem might be.

Things to try before contacting Overleaf

The following procedures can help to determine if the problem is caused by browser state, interference from an extension, or another browser-related issue:

• Refresh your browser page.
• Clear your browser’s cookies and cache (especially the cookies).
• Use the Incognito/Private mode of your browser.
• Temporarily disable any browser extensions/plugins especially ad-blockers, download managers or firewalls/proxies that you may be running.
• Make sure your browser is up-to-date, and is a supported version.
• Check domain access: The editor needs full access to compiles.overleafusercontent.com in order to download PDF and log files.

If you experience difficulties viewing the generated PDF, please try changing to the Browser PDF Viewer instead of the Overleaf PDF Viewer.

If disabling your browser extensions or using Incognito/Private mode resolved the problem, the issue may have been caused by interference from one of the extensions. Re-enabling these one at a time may help identify which extension was interfering with Overleaf.

Next steps

These next steps can help to determine whether it is another process running on your computer/device, or your network configuration, which is interfering with access to Overleaf:

• Try to access your Overleaf account via a different computer/device.
• Connect using a different network (home/work/mobile).
• Switch to a different DNS, e.g. Google’s public DNS servers. This may help resolve DNS resolution failures, which can prevent some scripts from loading properly. The default DNS are usually set by your internet service provider or private network, and might sometimes be out of date and cause transitional issues.
• Ask your IT-department for full access on compiles.overleafusercontent.com .

Get in touch

If the previous suggestions did not help, please get in touch with Overleaf support for additional advice.

The best way to contact us is via the “Contact Us” link at the bottom of the project menu of the project you’re having trouble with. You can also reach us via the form on our contact page or by email: support@overleaf.com.

When contacting support, it is helpful to let us know:

• Which suggestions you have tried from this page.
• Your computer operating system and version, and your browser type and version.
• Does the problem affect all projects, or a specific project only?
• What you are seeing. Please let us know any error messages you are seeing and what the editor and viewer look like when the problem happens.