Installing LATEX under Windows 7 James A. Swenson …people.uwplatt.edu/~swensonj/latex/MiKTeXinstallation.pdf · Installing LATEX under Windows 7 James A. Swenson February 16, 2018

Installing LATEX under Windows 7

James A. Swenson

February 16, 2018

This is a record of my LATEX installation procedure on 18 December 2013, incompletely updated on 16February 2018.

1 Before you begin

You must know what your operating system is, and whether it’s a 32-bit or 64-bit version.I’m using Windows 7, 64-bit version. I’m assuming you’re using Windows 7; if not, some details will be

different. To check your version: from the Start menu, choose “Control Panel,” then “System and Security,”then “System.” My machine says, “System type: 64-bit Operating System.”

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2 The MiKTeX back end

Go to http://miktex.org/download, or google “MiKTeX” and look for a download site.This site offers a “Recommended Download.” I chose the “All Downloads” tab and clicked on “Basic

MiKTeX 2.9.6615 64-bit Installer” rather than taking the recommended 32-bit version. Your version numberwill be slightly different.

This file is large (∼210 MB); it may take a while to download.When the download finishes, run the file. I had to click “Yes” in a “User Account Control” box to give

the program permission to run, then check a box accepting the copyright conditions and click “Next.” Iinstalled MiXTeX for all users (click “Next”) and accepted the default installation directory (“Next”). Ichanged the default paper size to “Letter” and chose “Yes” for “Install missing packages on-the-fly.” Clicking“Next” and “Start” got the process underway. This step took 2 or 3 minutes. When the green progress barsdisappeared, I clicked “Next” and “Close.”

3 Ghostscript

Go to http://www.ghostscript.com/download/, or google “Ghostscript” and look for a download site. Iclicked “Ghostscript 9.22” – your version number may vary – and clicked “Ghostscript AGPL Release” inthe “Ghostscript 9.22 for Windows (64 bit)” row. The download took a couple of minutes.

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When the download finishes, run the file. I had to click “Yes” in a “User Account Control” box to givethe program permission to run. Then I clicked “Next” and “I agree,” and accepted the default installationdirectory (“Install”). When this is done, you can click to close the window. [I left the boxes checked, butyou could uncheck the “README” box.]

At this point, LATEX is functional. You can use TeXWorks as a word processor (you just installedTeXWorks, probably without noticing it).

4 WinEdt

I like WinEdt a lot more than I like TeXWorks. WinEdt is a word processor that’s optimized for typesettingwith LATEX. This is not free software, and it’s not strictly necessary. But it provides context highlighting,customizable keyboard shortcuts and macros, environment completion, and a lot of other nice features.

You can try WinEdt for 31 days for free, so I recommend not paying for it until you try it and see if youlike it. The current price is $60 for education professionals, or $40 for students.

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Go to http://www.winedt.com/download.html, or google “WinEdt” and look for a download site. Idownloaded version 5.5, because that’s the version for which I paid a long time ago. You might as well geta newer version; of course, if you do, your installation process will look different from mine.

When the download is finished, run the program. I had to click “Yes” in the User Account Control box,then click “Next” to get started. I accepted the user agreement and clicked “Next” five times (leaving thedefault settings alone), then clicked “Install” and finally “Finish,” which runs WinEdt.

The first thing you see in WinEdt is the “WinEdt Configuration and Installation Wizard.” You can workthrough the tabs in this dialogue box to customize the way WinEdt works; I left the defaults alone. But youshould open the “Diagnosis” tab to see if WinEdt is ready to work with LATEX. The text box will show a“Summary” – either smiley or frowny. Mine was frowny, so I read the error messages.

My diagnosis said, “TeX-Root: not Found.” Following the instructions provided, I clicked “ExecutionModes,” and under the “TeX System” tab, I cleared the “Auto-detect” checkbox, clicked the “Open...”folder icon, browsed to C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\ and clicked “Open.” Back in the “TeX System”box, I clicked, “Apply.” This made checkmarks appear in the “OK” boxes, so I clicked “OK” and went backto “Diagnose the system” in the main wizard.

I still had error messages, so again, I followed the directions in the text box: I clicked “Execution Modes,”and in the “Ghostscript” tab, I cleared the “Auto-detect” checkbox under “GSView Executable,” clicked the“Open...” folder icon, and browsed to C:\Program Files\gs\gs9.10\bin\gswin64.exe then clicked “Open.”Back in the “Execution Modes” window, I clicked “Apply,” and found a check in the “OK” box. I thencleared the “Auto-detect” checkbox under “GS Bin Folder,” clicked the “Open...” folder icon, and browsedto C:\Program Files\gs\gs9.10\bin\ then clicked “Open.” Back in the “Execution Modes” window, I clicked“Apply,” and found a check in the other “OK” box.

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I clicked “OK,” returned to the wizard, and clicked “Diagnose the System.” I still got the frownysummary, but didn’t see any error messages that looked alarming, so I just clicked “OK.”

I like to make PDFs with LATEX, so I opened the “Options\Menu Setup...” dialogue box. In the “MainMenu” tab, I double-clicked on “&Accessories.” I scrolled down and clicked on “&PDFTeXify,” put thecursor in the “Shortcut” field, and pressed CTRL-SHIFT-Z. This appeared in the field, and I clicked “OK”twice. Back in the word processor, I opened the file MiKTeXinstallation.tex, pressed CTRL-SHIFT-Z – andthis PDF was created!

If you are using Adobe Reader version 10 or higher, it may throw funny error messages about “DDEOpen”or “DDEClose” when you try to open or close a PDF file from WinEdt. If you have this problem, see myfurther advice at http://www.uwplatt.edu/∼swensonj/WinEdtWithAdobe.html.

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