Creating and managing users

Creating the first admin user

Once the Overleaf instance is running, visit the /launchpad page to set up your first admin user.

Alternatively, run the following command against your docker container to create your first user and make them an admin:

# Overleaf Toolkit users:
$ bin/docker-compose exec sharelatex /bin/bash -ce "cd /overleaf/services/web && node modules/server-ce-scripts/scripts/create-user --admin --email=joe@example.com"

# legacy docker-compose.yml users:
$ docker exec sharelatex /bin/bash -ce "cd /overleaf/services/web && node modules/server-ce-scripts/scripts/create-user --admin --email=joe@example.com"

This will create a user with the given email address if they don't already exist, and make them an admin user. In the command output, you will be given a URL to visit where you can set the password for this user and log in for the first time.

Note: You can use the same script for creating more (admin) users.

Deleting Users

User can be deleted via the following command, projects will also be deleted so be careful with this.

# Overleaf Toolkit users:
$ bin/docker-compose exec sharelatex /bin/bash -ce "cd /overleaf/services/web && node modules/server-ce-scripts/scripts/delete-user --email=joe@example.com"

# legacy docker-compose.yml users:
$ docker exec sharelatex /bin/bash -ce "cd /overleaf/services/web && node modules/server-ce-scripts/scripts/delete-user --email=joe@example.com"

Creating normal users

Once you are logged in as an admin user, you can visit /admin/register on your Overleaf instance and create a new users. If you have an email backend configured in your settings file, the new users will be sent an email with a URL to set their password. If not, you will have to distribute the password reset URLs manually. These are shown when you create a user.