! LaTeX Error: Not in outer par mode

Question

I am using an image within minipage and getting error message.

  ! LaTeX Error: Not in outer par mode.

Below is minimal working example.

\documentclass[11pt,table,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{array,ragged2e}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[top=2cm, bottom=3cm,right=1cm, left=1cm, headsep=26pt]{geometry}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{sidecap}
\usepackage{helvet}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
\begin{document}           
\begin{minipage}[t]{.98\linewidth}

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.33\linewidth}
 ABC
\end{minipage}

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.05\linewidth}
  \hspace{2cm}
\end{minipage}

 \begin{minipage}[t]{0.4\linewidth}
  \begin{minipage}[t]{0.5\linewidth} \textbf{Some text} \end{minipage}
  \begin{minipage}[t]{0.25\linewidth} \begin{figure}[h!]   \includegraphics[width=1.0\textwidth]{risk2.png} \end{figure} \end{minipage}
\end{minipage}             % Error is due to using figure in minipage

\end{minipage}
\end{document}             % End of document.

enter image description here

How can I fix this problem?

You cannot use a figure within a minipage. Remove the surrounding minipage. — Stefan Kottwitz, Jul 17 '13 at 06:16
Remove \begin{figure}[h!] and \end{figure}. Please include only \includegraphics[...]{...}. — Jagath, Jul 17 '13 at 06:17
As Jagath AR says, there is no need to put \includegraphics in a figure environment. TeX sees \includegraphics[...]{...} just like a big letter. — egreg, Jul 17 '13 at 06:25
If i remve this i cannot use caption and also text which is adjacent in next minipage seems to be hanging down. — manish, Jul 17 '13 at 06:29
Load caption (\usepackage{caption}) and use \captionof{figure}{your caption} to get caption outside figure environment. \captionof command is also provided by capt-of package — , Jul 17 '13 at 06:42
I have just uploaded the output after removing \begin{figure}[h!] and \end{figure} but "Some text" and "ABC" in adjacent minipages are hanging down it should be in the same line (Top aligned). How can i fix this? — manish, Jul 17 '13 at 07:11
Only a general remark: You should try to substitute some of those minipages with a parbox command. It is more robust and hence may make life a little easier. Minipages are good if you want to use specific properties like mpfootnotes — Martin - マーチン, Jul 17 '13 at 08:50
I've just had the similar problem however I was not using minipage but \begin{figure} environment and the ! LaTeX Error: Not in outer par mode. error was due to a missing \end{figure}. You should look through your document and see if something like \end{minipage} is not missing. — esmitex, Aug 29 '13 at 20:42

score 67 · Answer 1 · edited May 06 '23 at 17:44

Firstly to summarise the comments: figure environments may not appear in minipages. figure is a floating environment, but you want to place your graphics in a particular place. In principle, all you need is the \includegraphics, but as you notice, you do not get the vertical space you expect, so there may be other issues.

Let me run through your set-up to discuss several points.

Each minipage produces a box of typeset material, and these are placed essentially like individual characters you enter. In particular, blank lines between minipages will start new paragraphs and thus not stay on the same line. So many of the blank lines in your sample code need to be removed.

Next given that, many of the other constructs you use do not need to be encapsulated in a minipage. This applies in particular to the \hspace command. You can just write

\begin{minipage}...\end{minipage}\hspace{...}\begin{minipage}...\end{minipage}

as you would write

a\hspace{...}b

to get horizontal spacing between objects.

Similarly, an image can be included directly; the \includegraphics command produces another box of typeset material that is again placed much like a character. You can use \raisebox to adjust its vertical placing if necessary.

On the other hand, if you are using figure because you wanted to have a caption and figure number available, then using a minipage to include this and the caption would be appropriate. You can then use the caption package, which as \captionof command:

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.4\linewidth}
   \vspace{-2ex}
   \includegraphics{...}
   \captionof{figure}{Caption}
\end{minipage}

Note the use of a \vspace before the graphics; without it the first line of the minipage is very high, but the [t] option aligns on the baseline of the first line of the minipage so the image sticks up. -2ex is essentially the height of a capital letter, and will place the image so its top edge aligns with those. See Aligning image and text on top, with minipages for further discussion of such alignment of images in minipages.

Here is a modified version of your example putting these things together (irrelevant packages have been stripped out):

Sample output

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx,caption}
\usepackage[top=2cm, bottom=3cm,right=1cm, left=1cm, headsep=26pt]{geometry}
\usepackage{helvet}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}[t]{.98\linewidth}
  \begin{minipage}[t]{0.33\linewidth}
    \setlength{\parindent}{1em}
    Some text over several lines.

    Some text over several lines.
Some text over several lines in a new paragraph.

\end{minipage}
  \hspace{4em plus 1fill}
  \begin{minipage}[t]{0.2\linewidth}
    \setlength{\parindent}{1em}
    Some text over several lines.

    Some text over several lines.
Some text over several lines in a new paragraph.

\end{minipage}
  \quad
  \begin{minipage}[t]{0.2\linewidth}
    \vspace{-2ex}
    \includegraphics[width=1.0\linewidth]{example-image-a}
    \captionof{figure}{Caption}
  \end{minipage}
\end{minipage}
\end{document}

I have used \quad to space off the image minipage from the that for text to the left. This is equivalent to \hspace{1em}. For the space between the first two blocks, I used \hspace{4em plus 1fill}, this is a minimum of four quads but stretches to fill out the available room. The effect here is that your first minipage is flushleft, and the last pair is pushed flushright.

In the minipages, I set the paragraph indents; they are zero by default.

Note that minipage is quite a complex construct. It is appropriate if the material is long and includes several paragraphs. If it is just a single paragraph then \parbox is a better choice. See \parbox vs. minipage: Differences in applicability for a discussion.

good answer. but \show\quad says \hskip 1em\relax, not 2em. \qquad is 2em wide. — jakun, Apr 17 '20 at 11:11
Thank you @AndrewSwann! I was trying to put a row of images, and a caption under them in the \maketitle section of a paper. \titlepic solves the placement part of that but it (for the same reason as minipage?) does not allow using a figure inside the brackets of \titlepic{} . Your answer is super helpful! — Craig Reynolds, Mar 07 '23 at 22:41

score 24 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 15 '15 at 13:34

24

Add \usepackage{float} and use the option [H] in the figure.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{float} %figure inside minipage
\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}{0.48\textwidth} 
\begin{figure}[H]
\caption{\label{fig:label} Figure title}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{filename}
\end{figure}
\end{minipage}
\end{document}

edited Jun 15 '15 at 13:34

answered Jun 15 '15 at 13:01

Adenilton

341
2
3

1

Just adding [H] worked for me whilst using minted. – khatchad May 18 '17 at 19:35
1

@RaffiKhatchadourian It is good practice to be explicit about your dependencies and load the packages you use. If minted stopped depending on float, your document would stop compiling and you may have no idea why. – Witiko Jun 24 '22 at 19:32
Thank you! Worked for me. I had the same issue with the algorithm environment and this solved it. :) – patapouf_ai Jul 07 '22 at 22:02

score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 17 '15 at 13:15

The following is obviously not the source of your problem, but since it causes the same error, and this page is the first google hit for that error, I feel it might be useful for future readers to record it here anyway, if that's ok. So:

the

 ! LaTeX Error: Not in outer par mode.

can also be caused by forgetting to type an \end{table} a couple of lines higher.

(Normally this would of course be detected by a \begin{table} on line xxx followed by \end{document} error, but in my case the large number of outer par mode errors caused an emergency stop before getting there.)

In my case, an \end{figure} was swallowed by an incomplete command that expected an argument. — Roland Weber, Jan 30 '22 at 12:42

score 2 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 07 '14 at 12:54

2

Add \usepackage{float} and put the minipage (with grphics) inside figure.

\begin{figure}
\begin{minipage}
\begin{figure}
...
\end{figure}
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}
\begin{figure}
...
\end{figure}
\end{minipage}
\end{figure}

edited Nov 07 '14 at 12:54

Jesse

29,686

answered Nov 07 '14 at 12:49

André

31

7

Welcome to TeX.SX! How does this solve the answer? A little more code and a full example would be of more use – Nov 07 '14 at 13:22

! LaTeX Error: Not in outer par mode

4 Answers4

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