Skip to main content

Sidebar references missing document

navigation
A sidebar entry points at a document that is not in the project’s render index.

Q-13-1 — Sidebar references missing document

A sidebar entry points at a document that is not in the project’s render index.

What this means

A Quarto website builds its sidebars from _quarto.yml entries that name documents (- foo.qmd, - href: bar.qmd). At render time, each name is looked up in the project index — the list of documents the project will actually produce. This error fires when the name does not appear in that index. The sidebar still renders, but the entry has no working link.

Why this happens

Common causes:

  • A typo in the filename as it appears under sidebar:.
  • The document was renamed or deleted but _quarto.yml still references it.
  • The document is excluded from rendering by a project.render filter or by an underscore-prefixed filename.
  • A relative path resolved against the wrong base — sidebar paths are relative to the project root, not to the _quarto.yml location if those differ.

How to fix

Update the entry to point at a file that is in the render set, or add the missing file. The message names both the sidebar id and the missing path so the offending entry is easy to locate.