Files
OCRmyPDF/docs/errors.md
James R. Barlow 320876a6d1 docs: document Tesseract configs/ requirement (closes #1567)
When TESSDATA_PREFIX points at a hand-assembled tessdata folder lacking
the configs/ subdirectory (e.g. files pulled from tessdata_best),
Tesseract prints "read_params_file: Can't open hocr/txt" and produces no
output. The runtime now surfaces a clear error (v17.5.0); add the
matching documentation: a new errors.md entry and a note on the
TESSDATA_PREFIX docs.
2026-06-27 00:32:22 -07:00

80 lines
3.0 KiB
Markdown
Raw Blame History

This file contains ambiguous Unicode characters
This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.
% SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2022 James R. Barlow
% SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-4.0
# Common error messages
## Page already has text
:::{code}
ERROR - 1: page already has text! aborting (use --force-ocr to force OCR)
:::
You ran ocrmypdf on a file that already contains printable text or a
hidden OCR text layer (it can\'t quite tell the difference). You
probably don\'t want to do this, because the file is already searchable.
As the error message suggests, your options are:
- `ocrmypdf --force-ocr` to
`rasterize <raster-vector>`{.interpreted-text role="ref"} all vector
content and run OCR on the images. This is useful if a previous OCR
program failed, or if the document contains a text watermark.
- `ocrmypdf --skip-text` to skip OCR and other processing on any pages
that contain text. Text pages will be copied into the output PDF
without modification.
- `ocrmypdf --redo-ocr` to scan the file for any existing OCR
(non-printing text), remove it, and do OCR again. This is one way to
take advantage of improvements in OCR accuracy. Printable vector
text is excluded from OCR, so this can be used on files that contain
a mix of digital and scanned files.
## Input file \'filename\' is not a valid PDF
OCRmyPDF checks files with pikepdf, a library that in turn uses libqpdf
to fixes errors in PDFs, before it tries to work on them. In most cases
this happens because the PDF is corrupt and truncated (incomplete file
copying) and not much can be done.
You can try rewriting the file with Ghostscript:
:::{code} bash
gs -o output.pdf -dSAFER -sDEVICE=pdfwrite input.pdf
:::
`pdftk` can also rewrite PDFs:
:::{code} bash
pdftk input.pdf cat output output.pdf
:::
Sometimes Acrobat can repair PDFs with its [Preflight
tool](https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/correcting-problem-areas-preflight-tool.html).
(tesseract-config-missing)=
## Tesseract cannot open its config file \'hocr\' or \'txt\'
:::{code}
ERROR - Tesseract cannot open its config file 'hocr'.
:::
OCRmyPDF asks Tesseract to produce `hocr` and `txt` output. Tesseract
reads the instructions for these output formats from configuration files
named `hocr` and `txt` that live in the `configs/` subdirectory of its
`tessdata` folder. If those files are missing, Tesseract prints
`read_params_file: Can't open hocr`, exits without error, and produces no
output.
This usually happens when a `tessdata` directory was assembled by hand --
for example, by downloading individual `.traineddata` files from
[tessdata_best](https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tessdata_best) and
pointing `TESSDATA_PREFIX` at them -- because those repositories do not
include the `configs/` directory. A complete Tesseract installation from
your operating system\'s package manager includes it.
To fix this, ensure the `configs/hocr` and `configs/txt` files exist in
the `tessdata` directory that Tesseract is using. Copying the `configs/`
directory from a full Tesseract installation is sufficient. See
{envvar}`TESSDATA_PREFIX` for more on selecting an alternate `tessdata`
folder.