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I'm composing an academic cover letter. Despite an hour of hacking on the fancyhdr package and various cover letter templates, I've been unable to:

  • Make my university logo (PNG or PDF) to appear on the top left in the header, and my address to appear horizontally aligned with it on the right.

  • The letter is multiple pages, but the logo/header should only be on the first page.

  • Pages 2 and 3 should not have a big space at the top in the margins.

I've attached an example of a perfect format made with the venerable MS Word. I would be grateful for any ideas.

Example of a perfect cover letter format made with the venerable MS Word

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The following can be used as a template:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage[export]{adjustbox}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}% Remove paragraph indent

\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}% Clear header/footer
\fancyfoot[R]{\itshape Page~\thepage~of~\csname @abspage@last\endcsname}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}% Remove header rule

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}[t]{@{} l @{}}
  \includegraphics[height=7\normalbaselineskip,valign=t]{example-image-1x1} \\
  \\
  \bfseries Faculty Search Committee \\
  \itshape Department of Cleverness \\
  \itshape Impressive University
\end{tabular}%
\hfill
\begin{tabular}[t]{@{} r @{}}
  \bfseries My Name \\
  \itshape Dept.\ of Science \\
  \itshape Prestigious University \\
  \itshape 000-000-0000 \\
  \itshape [email protected] \\
  \itshape www.google.com \\
  \\
  January 15, 2021
\end{tabular}

\bigskip

Dear members of the Search Committee,

\bigskip

\lipsum[1-20]

\end{document}

Primarily, the "header" is not set as a header on the first page. It's two tabulars with the elements stacked as needed.

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  • Thank you!! Wow you even formatted the text. One note to other who may benefit from this: the y in "Page x of y" compiled to a blank space for me (using Overleaf). I fixed this by adding: \usepackage{lastpage} %in the header then modify the page number line to \fancyfoot[R]{\itshape Page~\thepage~of~\pageref{LastPage}}
    – cataclysmic
    Jan 17, 2021 at 7:30
  • @cataclysmic: True. Overleaf does not have an up-to-date version of LaTeX.
    – Werner ♦
    Jan 18, 2021 at 5:37
  • Your comment is the first I've heard of this. On Overleaf I'm using pdfLatex compiler and TeX live 2020. Do you have more info about this? I'm curious, as I switched to Overleaf because I like the version control and cloud access-- I didn't realize there was a downside.
    – cataclysmic
    Jan 19, 2021 at 6:09
  • @cataclysmic: In the raw logs you'll see LaTeX2e <2020-02-02> patch level 5 when compiling with TeX Live 2020. LaTeX was updated in October 2020 (see LaTeX News Issue 32) to include a number of new elements which aren't included in TeX Live 2020. It'll be in TeX Live 2021, but Overleaf might not update individual components of the distribution (including the kernel) since they want something that's stable and need to supply the globe with a well-tested platform.
    – Werner ♦
    Jan 19, 2021 at 6:47

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