[Tex/LaTex] I don´t get any compiling errors even though there should be and I don´t think I can find a log file

texworks

I recently downloaded MikTeX and wrote my first file in TeXworks. I managed to turn it into a PDF, until I realized that part of the text was hanging out of a line (basically the classic overfull hbox error.) But shouldn´t there have been an error notice telling me this? I read in a manual that you could see the errors in a log file. I checked the folder where I had saved my file and there is a file.pdf, a file.aux, a file which is a TeX-document, something that says file.synctex.gz(busy) and a file which is a text document. Is any of these the log file?
Did I maybe forget to download something…?

Best Answer

First, overfull boxes are only warnings, not errors. If there is a *.synctex.gz(busy) hanging around it is most likely from a previous compilation run that stopped with errors. Without (busy) at the end, this file is used to allow jumping back and forth between the source and the typeset PDF.

The .log file should be in the same folder as the .tex file you compiled, with the same base name. So if you compiled file.tex, after LaTeX runs, you should find file.log in the same directory.

But many editors with IDE-like features have built-in capability to view the log file and possibly step through any warnings/errors. TeXworks is one of these: you can go to

Window → Show Console Output

or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + \ to toggle a pane at the bottom of the window. This shows you the log output right in the editor window. If there are any errors or warnings after compilation, another tab also appears in this area reporting the warnings/errors.