Annotation has a scale factor of zero and was ignored

Classification

Validator	Validator version	Error message type
ghostscript		exact

File format

Version

Specification

Description

Location

Analyses

Analysis

There have been cases where tools like PyMuPDF do not find any annotations in the file, but Ghostscript still prints this warning. In other cases the files have actual annotations, which are broken. Further analysis is needed.

Is it a bug in the validating software? - no

Possible solutions

Remove annotations with Ghostscript

The suggestion

Remove the annotations using Ghostscript. The process is called refrying (a PDF file).

Execution

gs -o <fixed file>.pdf -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -dPreserveAnnots=false <broken_file>.pdf

Tested with:

Effects

All annotations are removed. Ghostscript will convert the file from PDF to PostScript and back to PDF again. The file may lose other features in the process.

Read more about refrying here: https://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/refrying

Justification

The file will now be valid, however, you lose all annotations.

Migrated files

Output example

Notes on the error

Related errors by source files

ghostscript:    Annotation has a scale factor of zero and was ignored
ghostscript:    Quartz PDFContext
ghostscript:    The file was produced by: macOS Versio 10.14.6 (Build 18G1012) Quartz PDFContext <<<<

Notice: any operation suggested on this page should be carefully considered before use, as this article is in continuous development.