Turnitin - File Types and Limitations

Owned by Learning Technology Advisors (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Nov 13, 2018 by Megan Hyndman (Unlicensed)Version comment
3 min read

Please review the guide below to help resolve issues preventing you from uploading papers to Turnitin.com:

 

Submission Instructions

To submit a paper to Turnitin, your paper must meet our requirements. If an assignment is set to "Allow Any File Type," Turnitin will accept any file that is less than 40 MB AND less than 400 pages in length. If the assignment is set to "Allow only file types that Turnitin can check for originality," only files that can generate Originality Reports will be allowed to be submitted to the assignment. Your paper must contain a minimum of 100 words, must be under 40MB (or approximately two million characters), less than 400 pages in length, and must not contain spaces in between every letter (l i k e  t h i s).

 

NOTE: The filename of your Turnitin submission cannot be over 200 characters long as the Turnitin service cannot process filenames longer than 200 characters. 

If you have a firewall and/or anti-virus (e.g., AVG) installed on your computer, then it may prevent Turnitin from working correctly. Note that sometimes, just using a different browser will resolve upload issues. For example, if you are using Internet Explorer, try using Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.

The most common reason for files not being accepted by Turnitin is that the file extension is missing or incorrect. See the Turnitin Troubleshooting Guide for more information on this.

Turnitin will currently accept the following file types to generate Originality Reports: 

  1. Microsoft Word® (.doc / .docx)*
  2. OpenOffice Text (.odt)**
  3. WordPerfect®  (.wpd)
  4. PostScript (.ps/.eps)
  5. Adobe® PDF*** 
  6. Microsoft PowerPoint® (.pptx, .ppt, .ppsx, and .pps)**** 
    (currently Myplace does not support Powerpoint submissions - see note below)
  7. HTML 
  8. Rich text format (.rtf) 
  9. Plain text (.txt)
  10. Hangul Word Processor file (.hwp)

Please note Turnitin does not support:

  1. Microsoft Works (.wps).
  2. Apple Pages file types.

Therefore, if you are using an unsupported word processor, you may need to save the file as a .txt or .rtf file in order to upload to Turnitin. 

Note - Microsoft PowerPoint: It is possible to submit PowerPoint files through Turnitin.com, Submit.AC.UK, Turnitin Basic integrations, newer versions of the Turnitin Direct integrations, and LTI compliant integrations only. It not possible to submit PowerPoint files using other non-LTI compliant integrations. Turnitin converts the PowerPoint slide deck into a static PDF, leaving all text and images in their original format but leaving out features such as presenter notes, embedded video, and animations. Text with visual effects is not supported, and it is recommended that any visual effects such as shadows and 3-D be removed prior to submitting to Turnitin.

Note - Microsoft Word:  We do not accept Microsoft Word 2007 macros-enabled (.docm) files (we do accept the standard .docx files). Whatever macro is encoded in the file is stripped away when submitted to Turnitin. For example, when using a "letter replacement macro," we strip the macro from the Wordfile, and whatever characters the student originally had in the file will appear (e.g. "a~").

Note - Open Office Text: Turnitin will not accept .odt files created from Google Drive. Turnitin may not accept ".doc" files created using OpenOffice since OpenOffice ".doc" files are not 100% Microsoft Word equivalent.

Note - Adobe PDF:  Turnitin will not accept PDF image files, forms, or portfolios. PDF files which do not contain highlightable text (e.g., a "scanned" file, which is often simply a picture of text) are unacceptable. PDF portfolio documents containing multiple files are not supported. PDFs created with software other than Adobe Acrobat® are not supported.

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