.tex file change to .eg file and information keeps getting pasted into the document

Question

Something strange just started to happen to my Overleaf project. While I was using the search tool to change capitalization in my references, text started getting pasted into my .tex file and the extension of the file changed to .eg. The text was something like

%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%
\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%
\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%
\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%
\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}%\ref{fig:3:2}

And it kept going on and added like 10 of these below every second.

I though there were some bug or that someone had gotten access to my account. I made a copy of my project and closed down. It stopped for a while, and then continued when I opened another file. It seems like it have stopped now though.

Any idea what this could have been?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Please send Overleaf questions to Overleaf ([email protected]) - I'm a member of the support team, and we're quite happy to answer questions like this.

This is likely caused by a browser plugin or extension. We've had reports that plugins that attempt to format LaTeX code that is found on websites (like "TeX All the Things") can have side-effects like this. Please disable any LaTeX rendering plugins while using Overleaf.

Please also see: Weird terminology in Overleaf's source code