how to make presentation in overleaf

Making Presentations With LaTeX

Last updated: July 25, 2024

1. Introduction

Currently, multiple programs enable us to create presentations. However, most of these programs are proprietary. It means that the presentations may depend on resources available only in particular versions of these programs.

To avoid problems with proprietary software versioning, we can employ open-source and holistic programs to create presentations.  This category of programs enables the user to focus on the presentation content instead of its theme.

So, we can choose the presentation theme after defining the presentation content. Furthermore, we can apply the different themes by only modifying a few lines in the presentation document.

An example of such a program is LaTeX/Beamer. Beamer is a LaTeX package that enables users to create presentations through a LaTeX fashioned document.

In this tutorial, we’ll explore the LaTeX/Beamer program. First, we’ll have a brief conceptual review on Latex and a presentation of the Beamer package. So, we’ll investigate several resources provided by Beamer to create presentations. Moreover, we’ll create a sample Beamer presentation to see how Beamer’s resources work in practice.

2. LaTeX and Beamer

LaTeX is a well-known program for typesetting typically employed to write medium-large scientific documents. However, LaTeX also supports importing packages that extend its resources and enables the user to use LaTeX for several purposes.

An example of these packages is TikZ. TikZ is a graphical package that makes it possible to create images with LaTeX. Through TikZ, we can easily, for instance, draw charts , flowcharts , and graphs .

Another relevant LaTeX package is Beamer . Beamer consists of a powerful package to make presentations with LaTeX. With Beamer, we can use straightforward and clean themes or create new themes with particular and exclusive designs for the presentations.

Beamer was developed to be fully compliant with LaTeX. So, the presentations created with Beamer are provided to the user as PDF files.

Employing PDF files for rendering presentations is a great choice since most hardware (computers, printers, smartphones, …) and software (Windows, Linux, macOS, …) support this file format.

2.1. A Little Bit Deeper on Beamer

There are many advantages to using Beamer for creating presentations.  Among them, we can cite, for instance, Beamer compatibility with different LaTeX compilers, such as pdflatex, dvips, and lualatex.

Furthermore, most of the widely known LaTeX commands and packages are available to use with Beamer. In this way, we have excellent resources for, for example, mathematical and source code typesetting.

Finally, Beamer provides a library with different themes. Thus, we can customize the presentation layout by changing just a few lines in the LaTeX code. It is also possible to create and import new themes, making the presentation customization process even more powerful.

The most challenging about Beamer is that the learning curve is steeper. This challenge gets higher proportions if the user is not familiar with LaTeX. So, the user may find it hard to give the first steps with this package.

Another typical challenge is the syntax of the Beamer/LaTeX commands, which are quite unusual when compared to other text/presentation editing programs.

Furthermore, Beamer uses coordinates to position graphical resources. So, the positioning is very precise but can be harder to define for non-experienced users.

In such a way, this tutorial will present the first steps on Beamer, discussing multiple challenges of this package and showing how to tackle them.

3. Beamer in Practice

In this section, we’ll study the process of creating LaTeX/Beamer presentations from scratch. First, we’ll have an explanation of the Beamer basic structure. Thus, we’ll see some particular Beamer resources.

3.1. Beamer Basics

So, we opened an empty LaTeX document, and we want to create a Beamer presentation.  The very first thing to do is define our document class as a Beamer document.  We do that by adding the following line to the document:

Next, we do the definition of the presentation core information. The most common information in this step consists of the presentation title, the authors’ name, the institute or company name, and the date. We can do these definitions using the lines below:

With these predefinitions done, we can finally start to build our presentation frames. So, we insert the following line to the LaTeX document:

The aforementioned line indicates to the LaTeX compiler that the following commands, flags, and text should be present as part of the presentation. Similarly, we show that the presentation ended with the line next (which is typically the last line of the document):

Between the beginning and end flags, we build the presentation itself.  A Beamer presentation is organized with frames (slides).  Usually, the first frame is the presentation title one. Thus, with the previously stated information, we create the presentation title frame with the following line:

Compiling the document at this point will generate the following frame:

Other frames ( let’s call them content frames ) are quite different: they require a beginning and end flag to delimitate their scope. So, we define a content frame with the lines next:

Inside a frame, we have its content. The frame content is from text to images, besides other flags and commands to define some frame features. In the following subsection, we’ll explore the building of a frame from scratch.

3.2. Frame Building

At first, we should consider that all the commands, flags, and content defined in this subsection are included in the scope of a frame.

In such a way, the first thing that we typically define in a frame is its title. We can do that in Beamer by using the following line:

After defining the frame title, we can work on the frame content. By default, only typing into a frame scope results in a justified text vertically centralized in the frame after being compiled. Thus, let’s consider the following content of a frame:

So, this frame has three lines. It is relevant to note that the symbol \\ indicates a line breaking for the LaTeX compiler. Furthermore, we can see basic text formatting with a bold line (\textbf{}) and an italic line (\textit{}).

Moreover, it is possible to change the text alignment in the frame. We can do that by inserting the text between begin (\begin{}) and end (\end{}) flags defining the scope of a different alignment. The available alignments are right (flushright), left (flushleft), and center (center). Let’s see the example below:

At last, we can add images to a presentation frame. We do that by using the standard figure scope of LaTeX. An example is provided next:

This example includes a centered image called Lena.png (available in the same folder of the LaTeX project) in the frame. The caption appears below the image, and we can employ the label to refer to the figure in any presentation frame.

So, the following image shows the compiled frame with the previously presented texts and images:

3.3. Theme Gallery

Besides the default theme (employed in the examples of the previous sections), the Beamer package natively provides a set of themes.  This set encompass 25 themes:  AnnArbor; Antibes; Bergen, Berkeley, Berlin, Boadilla, CambridgeUS, Copenhagen, Darmstadt, Dresden, Frankfurt, Goettingen, Hannover, Ilmenau, JuanLesPins, Luebeck, Madrid, Malmoe, Marburg, Montpellier, Pittsburgh, Rochester, Singapore, Szeged, and Warsaw.

To change the presentation theme, we need to add a theme flag before the beginning of the document scope (\begin{document}). Let’s see this flag for the Frankfurt theme:

In this way, the previously presented frames with the Frankfurt theme are shown next:

In addition to the native Beamer themes, we can use custom themes from third-party repositories, such as the Overleaf repository .

4. Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned about how to create presentations with LaTeX.  We took into account a popular LaTeX package to build presentations: the Beamer package. In this way, we first reviewed some fundamental concepts about LaTeX and, especially, about Beamer. So, we in-depth explored the process of building presentations in practice. 

Specifically, we studied the basic structure of a LaTex/Beamer presentation, the creation of frames, inserting and formatting the frame content, and how to change the Beamer default theme.

We can conclude that LaTeX and Beamer compose a powerful solution to build presentations. The main benefits of using them consist of a generic and precise way to define graphical resources and the compiling process that automatically generates a PDF file with the presentation.

How to make slides in LaTex

The beamer class.

The beamer class is a LaTeX class that allows you to create a beamer presentation. It can also be used to create slides. It behaves similarly to other packages like Prosper, but has the advantage that it works together directly with pdflatex, but also with dvips.

The Latex Beamer Class Homepage  provides with the steps to create a beamer presentation and some examples

Beamer Tutorial - MIT  (pdf)

LaTeX Beamer Templates

LaTeX Beamer Video

Powerdot is a presentation class for LaTeX that allows for the quick and easy development of professional presentations. It comes with many tools that enhance presentations and aid the presenter. Examples are automatic overlays, personal notes and a handout mode. To view a presentation, DVI, PS or PDF output can be used. A powerful template system is available to easily develop new styles.

CTAN  provides additional details on Powerdot.

Quick Tutorial on Powerdot for slide making

Note:  These softwares are not a part of the default installation for LaTeX. The software downloads can be obtained from the respective homepages. For further assistance with the installation on your machine please contact  computer support

A Presentation with LaTeX

A beamer slides template that uses the Metropolis theme (by Matthias Vogelgesang) for everyone who wants to set up a quick-and-easy presentation.

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How to embed video and animation in LaTeX and LaTeX beamer step by step

I want to know the procedure to embed video and animation in LaTeX step by step. I tried to follow the instructions from this forum and wrote a LaTeX file. This is my code for embedding a video in LaTeX beamer ...an icon is visible in the third slide but when I am clicking that video is not playing...I have tried with .avi file also. I do not know what went wrong

I would be really grateful if someone helps me out.

• beamerposter
• beamerarticle

• Note that your PDF viewer must be able to play videos. Maybe that is the problem. Which PDF viewer are you using? Adobe Reader? Please include the version. –  Martin Scharrer Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 13:41
• You can try my answer here . –  kiss my armpit Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 13:42
• no,I have Okular –  prashanta_himalay Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 13:54
• 1 Welcome to TeX.sx! –  Andrew Swann Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 13:59
• Another one is Can we use media9 to show a video on a PDF but the video is not embedded to the PDF? . –  kiss my armpit Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 14:08

3 Answers 3

In addition to Karl's students answers ( Can we use media9 to show a video on a PDF but the video is not embedded to the PDF? ) and this other question: gif image in beamer presentation I can suggest what I did for my thesis presentation:

In the preamble of the beamer:

And then I included my file like this:

As you can see, I used the .swf file extension. I too had a .avi file and in order to convert it to .swf I used AnyVideoConverter .

I hope this helps

• 2 What is FK3.png? Just the fisrt frame of the video as a placeholder until the video starts? –  Jonny Commented Jul 6, 2015 at 16:56
• 3 @Jonny Exactly. You can use any image you want –  Mario S. E. Commented Jul 10, 2015 at 10:40
• Thanks for this. This is the only option that worked for me. To convert to SWF, you can use ffmpeg, with the command line: "ffmpeg -i Source.flv -acodec copy Destination.swf". –  cfp Commented Jun 18, 2018 at 9:34

Below is the code about how I solved it using multimedia package. Someone can add an image also to avoid a black spot in the allocated space for the video.

• 5 The code doesn't work (my .mp4 doesn't play, although it does in vlc), regardless of the presence of an image. I have TeX, Version 3.1415926 (TeX Live 2013/Debian). Maybe it's too old? –  jaam Commented Mar 24, 2018 at 13:30
• 1 Codec issue? Just a wild guess. –  prashanta_himalay Commented May 21, 2018 at 16:59
• 2 this code makes a useless play button inside the PDF. Does not work. –  con Commented Jan 21, 2020 at 15:26

So here is my workaround for this. It opens your standard video player when you click on the image.

p/s: add a curly bracket

• 4 Isn't the code missing a curly bracket and should look like this: \movie[externalviewer]{\includegraphics[width=1.0\textwidth]{image.jpg}}{video.mp4} ? –  Marcus Commented Jan 5, 2021 at 18:17
• Hi, Its still not working. Any other suggestions, please? –  user3582228 Commented Aug 12, 2023 at 11:11

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Templates — Presentation

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Communicating and sharing your work effectively with colleagues, supervisors and the general public often requires the preparation of a suitable presentation, tailored to that audience. These templates make it easy to create such a presentation, and the resulting set of slides is available for distribution in PDF format – perfect for sharing before or after your lecture, seminar or talk.

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