pdflatex Fatal error - PDF inclusion: /Group dict missing

Question

\documentclass[a4paper,landscape]{article}
\usepackage{pdfpages}

\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages=1-last,nup=2x2,landscape=false,frame=true,
            noautoscale=false,delta=0mm 1mm]{handout.pdf}
\end{document}

output ends with:

pdfTeX warning: pdflatex (file ./handout.pdf): PDF inclusion: multiple pdfs with page group included in a single page
>] <handout.pdf, id=159, page=17, 364.19562pt x 273.14648pt>
<use handout.pdf, page 17>
<use handout.pdf, page 17>
<handout.pdf, id=160, page=18, 364.19562pt x 273.14648pt>
<use handout.pdf, page 18>
<use handout.pdf, page 18> <use handout.pdf, page 1>
<use handout.pdf, page 1> <use handout.pdf, page 1>
<use handout.pdf, page 1> <use handout.pdf, page 17>
<use handout.pdf, page 18> [5 <./handout.pdf
!pdfTeX error: pdflatex (file ./handout.pdf): PDF inclusion: /Group dict missing
 ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!

what does it mean and how to overcome it? What is /Group dict?

Thanks in advance!

UPDATE sources of minimal case: http://wikisend.com/download/429256/pdflatex-Group_error.zip

pdflatex handout.tex
pdflatex handout_2x2.tex

(actually it creates 2x1 nup).

My opinion is, that the error comes from severally used pictures. When one picture on page - it's OK, when two pages on single and image on other page already - it's a problem.

You will have to provide the handout.pdf for tests. Is your texsystem up-to-date? — Ulrike Fischer, Dec 15 '17 at 10:59
please look into zip source in update. The error is quite annoying. — d3im, Dec 20 '17 at 20:32
I get a similar problem when putting 18 slides on a page, but I did not find a solution, except for reducing the number of slides per page and then running pdfnup on the result again. — Arne Babenhauserheide, Nov 02 '20 at 22:28

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 15 '21 at 21:38

I faced the same problem. In my case, I wanted to create a "2-up" pdf from a beamer pdf file (with the command pdfjam --nup 1x2 my_file.pdf).

The source of the problem is that several pdf images generated by inkscape and libreoffice were included in the beamer presentation. This causes pdftex and consequently, pdfjam, to fail.

There is an active discussion related to having "Page Groups" in PDF in [1] ; but it is not related to pdfjam issues. But what they essentially propose is to clean the pdf code.

To my opinion, the proposed cleaning solution are quite cumbersome in [1]. In my case, I just cleaned the pdf file with the following command :

ps2pdf my_pdfile_buggy.pdf my_file_clean.pdf

The generated file my_file_clean.pdf can then be processed by pdfjam.

Tested on

Ubuntu 20.04
pdfjam : version 3.03
gs/ps2pdf : version 9.50

[1] Multiple PDFs with page group included in a single page warning

pdflatex Fatal error - PDF inclusion: /Group dict missing

1 Answers1