When I'm trying to use \ce{CH4} in the title with documentclass beamer, I get an Undefined control sequence error.
The following is an (almost) minimum (not) working example:
\documentclass{beamer}
\listfiles
\usepackage{mhchem}
\title{\ce{CH4}}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\ce{CH4}
\end{frame}
\end{document}
After running pdflatex mini, this is the output written to stdout+stderr
(mini.log is too long for a Stack Exchange post). Is there any workaround or otherwise that I can use to typeset chemical formulas in my title?
(My actual use case is in the title of a poster)
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14 (TeX Live 2013)
restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./mini.tex
LaTeX2e <2011/06/27>
Babel <3.9h> and hyphenation patterns for 78 languages loaded.
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Document Class: beamer 2013/12/02 3.33 A class for typesetting presentations (r
cs-revision 332bfd3ce558)
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Package mhchem Warning: You did not specify a 'version' option for the mhchem
(mhchem) package. If you are about to create a new document,
(mhchem) please write \usepackage[version=3]{mhchem} in your
(mhchem) preamble in order to use the most recent version of
(mhchem) mhchem.
)
! Undefined control sequence.
\mhchem@ce ...ate {s}\chardef \mhchem@ce@substate
=0\relax \mhchem@ce@result...
l.4 \begin{document}
? No pages of output.
Transcript written on mini.log.
Best Answer
\ceworks in the title if you don't define the title until after\begin{document}. Also, the package author very strongly suggests you use the[version=3]option when loading the package.