diff --git a/doc/Makefile b/doc/Makefile
index 6d824162e1..e224c20cbc 100644
--- a/doc/Makefile
+++ b/doc/Makefile
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ htmlonly:
 	@echo
 	@echo "Build finished. The HTML pages are in _build/html."
 
-html: clean examples2rst htmlonly
+html: clean htmlonly
 	@echo "Build HTML and API finished."
 
 examples2rst: clean
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ examples2rst: clean
 	../tools/make_examples.py -x ../../../examples/test_spm.py --no-exec
 	@echo "examples2rst finished."
 
-latex: clean examples2rst
+latex: clean
 	$(SPHINXBUILD) -b latex $(ALLSPHINXOPTS) _build/latex
 	@echo
 	@echo "Build finished; the LaTeX files are in _build/latex."
diff --git a/doc/conf.py b/doc/conf.py
index 23f5ddf205..e1da69f130 100644
--- a/doc/conf.py
+++ b/doc/conf.py
@@ -16,6 +16,9 @@
 from packaging.version import Version
 import nipype
 
+os.makedirs('users/examples', exist_ok=True)
+os.system('python ../tools/make_examples.py -x ../../../examples/test_spm.py --no-exec')
+
 # If extensions (or modules to document with autodoc) are in another directory,
 # add these directories to sys.path here. If the directory is relative to the
 # documentation root, use os.path.abspath to make it absolute, like shown here.