Turnitin currently accepts the following file types for upload into an assignment that has the Allow only file types that Turnitin can check for similarity option enabled.

  • Microsoft Word® (DOC and DOCX)
  • Corel WordPerfect®
  • HTML
  • Adobe PostScript®
  • Plain text (TXT)
  • Rich Text Format (RTF)
  • Portable Document Format (PDF) (Created using Adobe Acrobat)
  • OpenOffice (ODT)
  • Hangul (HWP)
  • Powerpoint (PPT)
  • Google Docs via Google Drive™

When 'Accept any file type' is enabled for an assignment, Turnitin will accept any file type submission as long as file requirements are met.

Media files uploaded with 'Accept any file type' will shown in the Turnitin viewer as a Grading From. A grading form is like a piece of blank paper where you can add QuickMarks to still provide grading to files that wouldn't normally display. The original file can be downloaded from the top of the viewer.

The file size may not exceed 100 MB and must be 800 pages or fewer. Files of a 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.

Text only files may not exceed 2 MB.

If your class is set up to only accept files in which Turnitin can generate a similarity report, 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 whose text files are saved in a file type that is not accepted by Turnitin when the assignment is set to Allow only file types that Turnitin can check for similarity 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.