Skip to main content

Pandoc Not Found

pandoc
The pandoc binary could not be found on PATH, and QUARTO_PANDOC is not set.

Q-20-1 — Pandoc Not Found

The pandoc binary could not be found on PATH, and QUARTO_PANDOC is not set.

What this means

Some Quarto output formats (currently docx and pptx) are produced by shelling out to a real pandoc binary rather than Quarto’s own native renderer. Quarto looked for pandoc on PATH and did not find it, and no QUARTO_PANDOC environment variable pointed at an explicit location.

Why this happens

  • Pandoc is not installed on this machine.
  • Pandoc is installed but not on the shell’s PATH (common with a non-standard install location, or a CI image that installs pandoc into a directory not added to PATH).
  • QUARTO_PANDOC is set to a path that does not exist.

How to fix

Install pandoc from pandoc.org, or — if it is already installed somewhere not on PATH — set the QUARTO_PANDOC environment variable to the full path of the pandoc binary.