Adding Custom Packages and Styles

A package adds something LaTeX cannot do on its own: include images, draw better tables, set your margins.

Load one in the preamble, before \begin{document}:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{graphicx}   % images
\usepackage{booktabs}   % better tables
\usepackage{amsmath}    % maths
\usepackage{hyperref}   % clickable links and references
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}   % margins

\begin{document}

Some packages take options, in square brackets before the name, as geometry does above.

Overleaf already has the full TeX Live distribution, so there is nothing to install — the \usepackage line is all you need. If compiling fails, check the spelling of the package name first, then open the log for the line that mentions it.

To reuse the same preamble across projects, put it in a .sty file, add that file to the project, and load it by its name without the extension: \usepackage{mypreamble}.