What causes "target document [%s] not found" in siyuan-note/siyuan?

Re-fetch the document tree/notebook listing and confirm the targetID exists as a document

target document [ ] not found

Error message

target document [%s] not found

What it means

During document sort/reorder operations, the kernel resolves the target document via treenode.GetBlockTree and requires it to be a sortable document (an existing document block). If the target ID does not resolve to a valid document, the operation reports 'target document not found'. Note this message is also reused when the target exists but is not a sortable document, so it covers both missing and ineligible targets.

Solutions

Re-fetch the document tree/notebook listing and confirm the targetID exists as a document
Refresh the frontend view so the reorder operation uses current IDs, then retry
Check the ID is a document (root block) ID, not a child block ID
If the notebook was recently synced, wait for indexing to complete before reordering

Example fix

// before
reorderDocs(srcIDs, possiblyDeletedID, "after")
// after
if docExists(possiblyDeletedID) {
    reorderDocs(srcIDs, possiblyDeletedID, "after")
}

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

const target = await getDocTreeItem(targetID)
if (!target || target.type !== "document") throw new Error("target document missing, refresh tree")

Type guard

const isDoc = (item) => !!item && item.type === "document"

Try / catch

try { await api.reorderDocs(src, targetID, pos) } catch (e) { if (String(e).includes("target document") && String(e).includes("not found")) { await refreshFileTree(); return retryOnce() } throw e }

Prevention

Refresh the file tree after sync/delete events before issuing reorders
Never persist document IDs across long-lived jobs without revalidation
Distinguish document IDs from child block IDs at extraction time

When it happens

Trigger: Calling the doc sort/reorder API with a targetID of a non-existent document, a deleted document, or a non-document block; race where the document was deleted between UI listing and the reorder call.

Common situations: Stale UI state after another client deleted the document via sync; plugins caching document IDs across notebook rebuilds; typos or truncated IDs in manual API scripts.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Not found" and "does not exist" errors: why "Task not found", "No such folder", and "Can't find" fire when a lookup comes back empty — this error's family across 14 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of siyuan-note/siyuan@9f775e8a12 (2026-09-19). Data as JSON: /api/errors/39e10de329cdb2d6. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at kernel/model/file.go:2688

// ReorderResult 描述相对排序操作的结果。
type ReorderResult struct {
	Changed    bool   `json:"changed"`
	Notebook   string `json:"notebook,omitempty"`
	ParentPath string `json:"parentPath,omitempty"`
}

// ReorderDocs 将同级文档移动到目标文档之前或之后。
func ReorderDocs(sourceIDs []string, targetID, position string) (ret *ReorderResult, err error) {
	ret = &ReorderResult{}
	if err = validateReorderArgs(sourceIDs, targetID, position); nil != err {
		return
	}

	FlushTxQueue()
	target := treenode.GetBlockTree(targetID)
	if !isSortableDocument(target) {
		return ret, fmt.Errorf("target document [%s] not found", targetID)
	}
	box := Conf.Box(target.BoxID)
	if nil == box {
		return ret, fmt.Errorf("target document [%s] is not in an opened and unlocked notebook", targetID)
	}
	parentPath := path.Dir(target.Path)
	for _, sourceID := range sourceIDs {
		source := treenode.GetBlockTree(sourceID)
		if !isSortableDocument(source) {
			return ret, fmt.Errorf("source document [%s] not found", sourceID)
		}
		if source.BoxID != target.BoxID || path.Dir(source.Path) != parentPath {
			return ret, fmt.Errorf("source document [%s] is not a sibling of target document [%s]", sourceID, targetID)
		}
	}

	fileTreeSortLock.Lock()
	confPath := filepath.Join(util.DataDir, box.ID, ".siyuan", "sort.json")

View on GitHub (pinned to 9f775e8a12)