Beamer: frame number in split theme footline

Yet again somebody in the mrunix forum asked for an advice how to put the frame number into the footline of his beamer presentation. He was using the “Warsaw” outer theme. The first solution

\setbeamertemplate{footline}[frame number]

will just overwrite the “Warsaw” footline.

Edit 2021: A very short solution proposed by samcarter on LaTeX.org is:

\setbeamertemplate{page number in head/foot}[totalframenumber]

Full code by samcarter:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{Warsaw}
\title{Beamer Example}
\setbeamertemplate{page number in head/foot}[totalframenumber]
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
abc
\end{frame}
\end{document}

Old way posted 2008: We could use a different outer theme or to change the “Warsaw” footline. “Warsaw” uses the split outher theme, a workaround for insertion of the frame number should consider that and will be usable for other themes like “Copenhagen”, “Luebeck” and “Malmoe”. Inspection of the file beamerouterthemesplit.sty reveals that the footline uses the \insertshorttitle macro in its right part. So a quick workaround could be to redefine that macro:

\newcommand*\oldmacro{}%
\let\oldmacro\insertshorttitle%
\renewcommand*\insertshorttitle{%
  \oldmacro\hfill%
  \insertframenumber\,/\,\inserttotalframenumber}

If you want to see more details you could look at example source code and its pdf output.

This topic was discussed on mrunix.de and in the Matheplanet forum.

12. July 2008 by stefan
Categories: Uncategorized | 24 comments

Comments (24)

  1. Stefan Kottwitz says October 27, 2008 at 1:39 am

    Here’s a modification using \expandafter like I’ve described in this blog post:

    \expandafter\def\expandafter\insertshorttitle\expandafter{%
  \insertshorttitle\hfill%
  \insertframenumber\,/\,\inserttotalframenumber}
    Reply
  2. Ingo says June 24, 2009 at 4:11 pm

    Thanks! Great solution!

    Reply
  3. Jeff says August 13, 2009 at 7:02 am

    Thank you so much, exactly what I was looking for!

    Reply
  4. Travis says November 15, 2009 at 2:02 am

    Thanks Stefan, the 12 July 2008 workaround helped me a lot.

    Reply
  5. Timotej Stanek says January 18, 2011 at 2:30 pm

    thank you very much, this the most best solution

    Reply
  6. Sal says March 26, 2011 at 8:31 pm

    Thanks a lot, it works perfectly!

    Reply
  7. David says March 31, 2011 at 7:32 am

    Fabulous ! Thanks.

    Reply
  8. anne says September 15, 2011 at 9:19 am

    Thank you very much… this solved a major problem I had…

    Reply
  9. Guillem says October 13, 2011 at 4:33 pm

    Awesome! thanks

    Reply
  10. benjamin says October 20, 2011 at 3:30 pm

    Exactly why I needed !! Many thanks !

    Reply
  11. Erick says November 8, 2011 at 7:07 am

    Pretty clean solution… Works like a charm!
    Thank you so much.

    Reply
  12. Alireza says November 15, 2011 at 12:25 pm

    Perfect.

    Thanks alot

    Reply
  13. BEAB says December 15, 2011 at 6:06 pm

    this one reall work, thanks

    Reply
  14. Tausen says January 23, 2012 at 11:35 am

    Excellent – thanks! :D

    Reply
  15. abhijit says May 8, 2012 at 1:07 pm

    Thank you… very much…
    keep it up!!!!!!!!!!

    Reply
  16. Colin says May 21, 2012 at 1:03 am

    Wow – great solution!!! Thanks

    Reply
  17. augusto says September 17, 2012 at 8:27 pm

    Thanks a lot!

    Reply
  18. J says November 11, 2012 at 10:45 pm

    Perfect. Exactly what I was looking for!

    Reply
  19. alex de souza says December 3, 2012 at 12:50 pm

    well done boy! good work!

    Reply
  20. Maria says March 7, 2013 at 11:50 am

    Exactly what I was looking for! Thank you!

    Reply
  21. Ahmed says June 5, 2013 at 11:24 am

    Thank youuuu

    Reply
  22. Giorgos says May 14, 2014 at 2:47 pm

    Great advice, thank you very much!

    Reply
  23. David says September 24, 2015 at 4:08 pm

    Update: The Warsaw template now uses the shadow theme, not split theme, for the footer.

    So, when you want to re-write the footer line with, say \defbeamertemplate, you’ll have to pass shadow theme as argument.

    Reply
  24. SY Kim says November 18, 2016 at 7:00 am

    This is exactly what I wanted. You are my savior!

    Reply

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