File types and size

The file types that Turnitin can generate a similarity report for are:

  • Microsoft Word
  • PowerPoint
  • WordPerfect
  • PostScript
  • PDF
  • HTML
  • RTF
  • OpenOffice (ODT)
  • Hangul (HWP)
  • Google Docs (submitted via the Google Drive submission option),
  • Plain text files

The file size may not exceed 100 MB. Files of larger size may be reduced in size by removal of non-text content. Files that are password protected, encrypted, hidden, system files, or read only files cannot be uploaded or submitted to Turnitin.

If the file only contains text, it must be less than 2MB.

PDF documents must contain text to be submitted. PDF files containing only images of text will be rejected during the upload attempt. To determine if a document contains actual text, copy and paste a section or all of the text into a plain-text editor such as Microsoft Notepad or Apple TextEdit. If no text is copied over, the selection is not actual text.

Users submitting scanned images of a document or an image saved as a PDF will need to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to convert the image to a text document. Manual correction of the resulting document is highly recommended to fix any errors caused by the conversion software.

Some document formats can contain multiple data types. This includes text, images, embedded information from another file, and formatting. Non-text information that is not saved directly within the document will not be included in a file upload. This includes references to a Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet included within a Microsoft Office Word document.

Users whose files are saved in a file type that is not accepted by Turnitin will need to use a word processing program to save the file as one of the accepted types. Rich Text Format and Plain Text file types are nearly universally available in word processing software. Neither file type will support images or non-text data within the file. Plain text format does not support any formatting, and rich text format supports only limited formatting options.

Users who are converting to a new file format will need to save their file with a name different than the original. Any file should be saved with a new file name when converting to plain text or rich text formats to prevent permanent loss of the original formatting or image content of a file.