General ⇒ LaTeX Problems: Getting Started

[wrmit]

Hi everyone,

I'm a student majoring in chemistry and I am new to LaTeX. I'm using a Mac and my friend helped me download texmaker and a few packages, and I've been learning a lot from these forums, but I'm having some problems getting started.

For example when I try to compile and view the PDF version of my documents, I get an error message that says

2009-12-26 17:49:59.851 open[2148] No such file:
/Users/robert/Desktop/LatexFile.pdf

I'm not sure how to fix this problem. Do I have to save something in a certain place? How can I make the pdf file?

I also wanted to use the mhchem package. I downloaded it from CTAN, and then I tried to use the package by writing \usepackage[version=3]{mhchem} in the preamble, but it won't work. Am I supposed to save the package in a certain place on my computer in order to use it?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[josephwright]

You don't say, but did you install a TeX system (for example, MacTeX 2009: http://www.tug.org/mactex/2009/)?