When do I need to invoke \phantomsection?

Question

Inspired by question When do I need invoke \clearpage manually?:

When do I need to invoke \phantomsection?

In what condition is invoking \phantomsection necessary?

See question in http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/7627/how-to-reference-paragraph and my answer there for an example why you want to use \phantomsection{}. — petermeissner, Oct 17 '12 at 13:00
Have you found any answer which you can accept? I think there are quite many good ones. — Léo Léopold Hertz 준영, Apr 21 '17 at 10:09

Danie Els · Answer 1 · 2012-02-10T11:21:21.003

132

The \phantomsection command is nessesary for hyperref to jump to the correct page, in other words it puts a hyper marker on the page. For example a starred section or chapter added to the TOC would normally refer to the wrong place without \phantomsection

\chapter*{Extended Summary}
\phantomsection
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Extended Summary}%
\markboth{Extended Summary}{Extended Summary}%

I normaly put in the preamble the command

\providecommand\phantomsection{}

Your document can then be compiled with or without hyperref without an error

edited Feb 10 '12 at 11:21

answered Feb 10 '12 at 11:15

Danie Els

19,694

23

Especially elegant, your \providecommand – Brent.Longborough Feb 10 '12 at 11:46
Is hyperref only application ? – Grzegorz Wierzowiecki Feb 10 '12 at 12:24
@Grzegorz Wierzowiecki: Yes it is only nessesary for hyperref (hyperref defines it internaly) – Danie Els Feb 10 '12 at 12:28
@GrzegorzWierzowiecki: If you're content with this information, don't forget to accept the answer. If there's something else you want to know, let us know. – doncherry Mar 23 '12 at 02:06
17

Since hyperref 2009/11/25 v6.79h \phantomsection is no longer necessary in this situation. With this usage, the anchor is put after the chapter title. – Heiko Oberdiek Oct 17 '12 at 13:19
@Heiko Oberdiek: Thank you, I did not know about the update (neither has the maintainer of memoir ;-) ). – Danie Els Oct 17 '12 at 20:31
1

Can you please explain why you use \providecommand\phantomsection{}? – Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 Apr 21 '17 at 10:10
3

@LéoLéopoldHertz준영 When hyperref is not loaded, it is not defined. – Danie Els Apr 23 '17 at 09:00
1

@HeikoOberdiek Is it just not need, or should it not be used? – lcnittl Nov 05 '17 at 22:19
@lcnittl It should not be used unless you want to have a wrong anchor position. – Heiko Oberdiek Nov 06 '17 at 03:55
In my case I need it for ToC, LoF, LoT, and it needs a \cleardoublepage before to correctly place the mark on new page. I don't need it for chapter*, they work correctly already. – DDMC Jan 24 '21 at 05:04
\providecommand\phantomsection{} command is brillant! – Yigit Alparslan Jan 31 '21 at 02:18
Very useful. Thanks. – Caleb Stanford Jul 05 '22 at 19:03

score 111 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 09 '12 at 20:30

I am providing a different answer to this question because the original answer is out of date.

The \phantomsection command is needed to create a link to a place in the document that is not a figure, equation, table, section, subsection, chapter, etc.

This is mostly used in conjunction with \addcontentsline or with \label and \hyperref. For example, the following code will create a contents line and a link to somewhere in the document.

\phantomsection
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Some place in the document}
\label{some}
This is just \hyperref[some]{some place} in the document.

Without the \phantomsection line, both the contents line and the link would point to the beginning of the current section (or subsection, etc.)

In previous versions of hyperref (before 2009-11-25), you also had to use \phantomsection with unnumbered sections (e.g. \section*) to prevent links from pointing to the previous section. This is not necessary in up-to-date distributions.

Thank you for this informative answer. Too bad I can't upvote it again. — Steven B. Segletes, Aug 01 '17 at 18:13

score 11 · Answer 3 · edited May 22 '21 at 04:41

11

I've found none of the previous answers to work, but the below snippet works well:

\newpage
\phantomsection \label{listoffig}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{List of Figures}
\listoffigures

Originally found on: http://sumanta679.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/latex-list-of-table-list-of-figures-and-bibliography-in-toc/

edited May 22 '21 at 04:41

zyy

2,146

answered Mar 04 '13 at 09:19

Robert Foss

1,343

This looks very similar to the code Nathan Grigg posted: could you elaborate on the difference? – Joseph Wright Mar 05 '13 at 08:01
2

I didn't get Nathans code to work. Why? I couldn't tell you. But here's a solution that worked for me. – Robert Foss Mar 06 '13 at 15:51
Adding \newpage before \phantomsection is what made it work for me. – Lino Ferreira Oct 01 '23 at 10:07

When do I need to invoke \phantomsection?

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