! LaTeX Error: Missing \begin{document}.

[BikalpaRegmi]

Hii during converting my Markdown File to pdf I am getting this error even if i have included /begin{document} as shown below -:

ERROR -:
Error producing PDF.
! LaTeX Error: Missing \begin{document}.

See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type H for immediate help.
...

l.1 4

The md file -:

title: Protocol Audit Report
author: Bikalpa Regmi
date: April-13 , 2025
header-includes:

• \usepackage{titling}
• \usepackage{graphicx}

---

\begin{titlepage}
\centering
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{Logo.pdf}
\end{figure}
\vspace*{2cm}
{\Huge\bfseries Protocol Audit Report\par}
\vspace{1cm}
{\Large Version 1.0\par}
\vspace{2cm}
{\Large\itshape Cyfrin.io\par}
\vfill
{\large \today\par}
\end{titlepage}

\maketitle

[BikalpaRegmi]

The problem was solved by doing the following -:

You can copy this and replace your first line till prepared by with this

*---
title: "Protocol Audit Report"
author: "Bikalpa Regmi"
date: "April 13, 2025"
output:
pdf_document:
latex_engine: xelatex
toc: true
number_sections: true
header-includes:

• \usepackage{graphicx}
• \usepackage{float}
• \usepackage{titling}
• \pretitle{\begin{center}\includegraphics[width=0.3\linewidth]{Logo.pdf}\[\bigskipamount]}
• \posttitle{\end{center}}
  --- *

<-- Your report starts from here -->
...

Do the following in the GitBash or WSL-:

pandoc Report.md -o report.pdf --pdf-engine=xelatex --highlight-style=zenburn

Plz make sure you have installed latex and pandoc and added it in WSL or GitBash. If you want to check then write pandoc --version and xelatex --version in your gitBash or WSL command pannel.

[EngrPips]

Thanks for this great heads-up.

[zakatz36]

Thanks Bikalpa, I had the same issue and your changes were able to fix it.

[ntdegenerate]

I tried this, and it didn't work for me.

Surprisingly, by following the default setup from the course and compiling with:

pandoc report.md -o report.pdf --pdf-engine=xelatex --highlight-style=zenburn

works just fine.

You might have to sinstall xelatex pdf engine if you dont have

[EngrPips]

I tried this, and it didn't work for me.

Surprisingly, by following the default setup from the course and compiling with:

pandoc report.md -o report.pdf --pdf-engine=xelatex --highlight-style=zenburn

works just fine.

You might have to sinstall xelatex pdf engine if you dont have

Interesting.