Catalog dictionary not located in file, unable to proceed

Classification

Validator	Validator version	Error message type
Ghostscript	10.06.0

File format	Version	Specification	Description	Location
application/pdf	1.4			OPF
application/pdf	1.2		Govdocs1 set	OPF

Analyses

No investigations yet.

Note

To help, share and save knowledge about fixing validation errors, please see: https://github.com/Digital-Preservation-Finland/knowledge-base/tree/master/.github/CONTRIBUTING.rst

Possible solutions

No remediation determined. All solutions are listed here.

Note

To update or provide a solution, please see: https://github.com/Digital-Preservation-Finland/knowledge-base/tree/master/.github/CONTRIBUTING.rst

Output example

Catalog dictionary not located in file, unable to proceed

GPL Ghostscript 10.06.0 (2025-09-09)
Copyright (C) 2025 Artifex Software, Inc.  All rights reserved.
This software is supplied under the GNU AGPLv3 and comes with NO WARRANTY:
see the file COPYING for details.
   **** Error: Couldn't initialise file.
               Output may be incorrect.
   No pages will be processed (FirstPage > LastPage).

Notes on the error

Related errors by source files

Ghostscript:    A closing mark (] or >>) had no matching mark, ignoring the closing mark
Ghostscript:    A dictionary is missing a required /Type key.
Ghostscript:    A Form XObject had a BBox with a width or height of 0
Ghostscript:    An embedded font is invalid
ghostscript:    Annotation has a scale factor of zero and was ignored
Ghostscript:    A page ended after a BT had been executed and without a mtching ET
Ghostscript:    badly escaped name
Ghostscript:    bad trailer dictionary
Ghostscript:    BT found inside a text block
Ghostscript:    cannot process embedded stream for font object
Ghostscript:    Can't repair xref, repair already performed
Ghostscript:    Catalog dictionary not located in file, unable to proceed
Ghostscript:    circular reference to indirect object
Ghostscript:    Couldn't find a named resource
Ghostscript:    Couldn't retrieve MediaBox for page, using current media size
Ghostscript:    degenerate text matrix
Ghostscript:    Document Catalog has incorrect /Type
Ghostscript:    encountered more q than Q
Ghostscript:    encountered more Q than q
Ghostscript:    error executing PDF token
Ghostscript:    error reading a stream
Ghostscript:    ET found outside text block
Ghostscript:    found real number when expecting int
Ghostscript:    garbage left on stack
Ghostscript:    ignoring zlib error: incorrect data check
Ghostscript:    Incorrect /Length for stream object
Ghostscript:    integer overflowed
Ghostscript:    Invalid ICC colour profile, using alternate
Ghostscript:    Invalid number format: scientific notation
Ghostscript:    invalid object number
Ghostscript:    invalid operator used in text block
Ghostscript:    Invalid xref entry, incorrect format.
Ghostscript:    'loca' length .* is greater than numGlyphs .* in the font .*
Ghostscript:    malformed number
Ghostscript:    missing white space after number
Ghostscript:    non standard operator found - ignoring
Ghostscript:    no startxref token found
Ghostscript:    number uses illegal exponent form
Ghostscript:    Object has an unrecognised Subtype
Ghostscript:    object lacks an endobj
Ghostscript:    object lacks a required Subtype
Ghostscript:    Page drawing error occurred.
Ghostscript:    Page has an invalid /MediaBox attribute. Using the current page size.
Ghostscript:    Page has no /MediaBox attribute. Using the current page size.
Ghostscript:    page not found.
Ghostscript:    Page object does not have /Page type
Ghostscript:    page tree root node /Count did not match the actual number of pages in the tree.
Ghostscript:    Possible missing white space between operators
ghostscript:    Quartz PDFContext
Ghostscript:    recoverable image error
Ghostscript:    stack underflow
Ghostscript:    startxref offset invalid
Ghostscript:    text operator outside text block
ghostscript:    The file was produced by: macOS Versio 10.14.6 (Build 18G1012) Quartz PDFContext <<<<
ghostscript:    **** The file was produced by: \\n   **** >>>> Adobe PSL 1.2e for Canon\\u0000 <<<<
Ghostscript:    The string data prameter for a /Indexed colour space lookup is too short
Ghostscript:    unbalanced or unescaped character '(' in string
Ghostscript:    /undefined in --runpdf--
Ghostscript:    used invalid operator in CharProc
Ghostscript:    xref entry not exactly .* bytes
Ghostscript:    xref entry not valid format
Ghostscript:    xref table was repaired
JHOVE:  Improperly nested dictionary delimiters
JHOVE:  Invalid object definition
veraPDF:        can not locate xref table

Notice: any operation suggested on this page should be carefully considered before use, as this article is in continuous development. Data is available at https://github.com/Digital-Preservation-Finland/knowledge-base.