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I am just using Overleaf, I have a paper with documentclass is conference IEEEtrans. When i tried to upload it to ArXiv ( i guess they use a latex software to generate PDF from tex files), i got a weird error, which is:

! Undefined control sequence.
l.1 ^^ef^^bb^^bf\documentclass
[conference]{IEEEtran}
?
! Emergency stop.
l.1 ^^ef^^bb^^bf\documentclass
[conference]{IEEEtran}
No pages of output.
Transcript written on references.log

Hence, i made sure the tex file matched that of biblography and attached bbl file. Could anyone direct me on how to solve this. Thanks

moewe
  • 175,683
MWH
  • 199
  • It looks like your document starts off with a UTF-8 byte order mark (BOM). Apparently, the arXiv doesn't like it. Unfortunately, I don't know how you remove the BOM on Overleaf. Most text editors have an option for that, but I don't know about Overleaf. If you are really lucky it may help to delete the first line in the file and re-type it (I have my doubts, though). Possibly related (but probably not helpful for arXiv submissions) https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/10474/35864 – moewe Apr 26 '20 at 05:25
  • The BOM mark would probably show up as a small dot in the .tex file on Overleaf; or might be invisible. You can probably try placing your cursor just before \documentclass, and then hitting backspace a few times, to delete it. Or simply delete the entire line, and re-type \documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}. – imnothere Apr 26 '20 at 05:45
  • Thanks guys, the first line i have is documentclass,, i deleted it and then re-type it, the same error still showing!. – MWH Apr 26 '20 at 11:28
  • Thanks everyone. I started a new tex file, and it works fine, although it is weired – MWH Apr 26 '20 at 18:15
  • @MWH I am having the same issue, but recreating the file from scratch isn't helping. I posted the question here -> https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/548676/undefined-control-sequence-documentclass-on-arxiv – SyCode Jun 09 '20 at 21:24

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