Institutional email reconfirmation

Overleaf users may be asked to reconfirm their institutional email addresses from time to time. This page answers common questions about the institutional email reconfirmation process. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please let us know.

Why am I being asked to reconfirm my email address?

Reconfirming your email addresses helps to ensure that the email addresses associated with your Overleaf account are still valid.

Having a valid primary email address helps make sure that you receive important notifications about your account, as well as invitations to join collaborations and group subscriptions.

Making sure that all of your email addresses are valid can help with account recovery and with account security.

Verifying your institutional email address helps our institutional subscribers (Overleaf Commons) keep accurate information about how many people are using the subscription and who is still entitled to use their subscription. This helps them make decisions about renewal, and about planning webinars and resource sharing related to LaTeX and Overleaf.

What happens if I don’t reconfirm my email address?

If you don’t reconfirm your email address, the email address will revert to the ‘unconfirmed’ state. This may mean that you may be removed from a license provided by the institution associated with that email address.

Being removed from a subscription will not affect your access to your account, your projects. However, it will affect the number of edit-access collaborators you can have per project. When you leave a subscription, your Overleaf account is placed on the free plan, and you will no longer receive the premium features that come with a subscription. If you are still eligible for this subscription, you will be re-enrolled when you confirm your email address.

If you do not reconfirm your email address, and do not remove the unconfirmed address, you will continue to see prompts in your dashboard asking that you reconfirm.

My email address isn’t valid anymore, but I still use it to log into Overleaf. What should I do?

We strongly recommend that you use a valid email address for your primary email address. To change your primary email address, first add a secondary email address and confirm it. Then make your secondary email address the primary address, and delete the old invalid email address. Detailed instructions for this are provided here.

I cannot confirm my email address, what should I do?

Any email address that cannot be confirmed should be removed from your account. If your primary email address cannot be confirmed, please choose or add a secondary email address which is confirmable and that can be used as your primary email address. Detailed instructions for changing your email address are provided here.

I am not receiving the email with the confirmation link, what should I do?

For institutions that do not provide an institutional login, email addresses are confirmed by clicking on the link provided in a confirmation email that Overleaf will send to you.

Sometimes confirmation emails can be placed in the ‘junk’ folder by your email client or server. If you do not see the confirmation email in your inbox, please check any junk or promotions folder. In some rare instances, institutional email servers may block these emails and prevent their receipt. If you suspect this may be happening, please let us know.

I haven’t seen any reconfirmation notifications - should I be concerned?

Currently Overleaf is only sending notifications to users from certain institutions. If you are not seeing a reconfirmation message, then you do not need to worry about reconfirming your email address.

Users who log in through their institution (using single sign-on/SSO) are reconfirming their email address automatically when they log in. Because of this, users who use an institutional login may not see a reconfirmation prompt, as their email has already been reconfirmed.

Why does Overleaf ask me to add additional email addresses?

In Overleaf, email addresses are used as login identifiers. We recommend that in addition to the primary email address, you also provide at least one secondary email address, to help with account recovery in the event that you lose access to your primary email address.

Adding additional secondary email addresses also helps to avoid accidentally creating additional Overleaf accounts, and also makes it easier to accept invitations to work on collaborations. Adding an institutional email address may allow you to join an institutional subscription.

Why am I seeing a reconfirmation prompt when my colleagues are not?

The prompt is shown to users who have not confirmed their address for a certain length of time. The prompt is not shown to all users at an institution at the same time. If someone has recently added their institutional email address, or recently logged in using SSO, they may not see the prompt.

I reconfirmed my email address – why have I been removed from my institution’s subscription?

If your status has changed at your institution, you may no longer be eligible to participate in your institution’s subscription. This can sometimes happen upon graduation, retirement, or when changing departments. To find out about your institution’s subscription, please check your institution’s Overleaf portal page (a list of most pages is found here). If you have further questions, please let us know.

Why did I receive an error message “this email is already registered” when I tried to add another email address to my Overleaf account?

This message means that you have at some point created (perhaps accidentally) another Overleaf or ShareLaTeX account using that email address.

For most users, we recommend having one Overleaf account - this has the benefit of having all projects in one place, and avoids confusion. Several email addresses can be added to an Overleaf account.

This page provides suggestions for how to recover and merge an extra Overleaf account. Please contact support if you need help following these guidelines.