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Turnitin file formats

To submit a paper to Turnitin, your paper must meet our requirements.  

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

  • Microsoft Word® (.doc / .docx)1
  • OpenOffice Text (.odt)2
  • Google Docs via Google Drive™ (.gdoc files are NOT acceptable)3
  • WordPerfect®  (.wpd)
  • PostScript (.ps/.eps)
  • Adobe® PDF4
  • Microsoft PowerPoint® (.pptx, .ppt, .ppsx, and .pps)5
  • Microsoft Excel® (.xls and .xlsx)6
  • HTML 
  • Rich text format (.rtf) 
  • Plain text (.txt)
  • Hangul Word Processor file (.hwp)

The paper being submitted must contain more than 20 words, must be under 20MB (or approximately one million characters), must not exceed 200 pages in length, and must not contain spaces in between every letter (l i k e  t h i s). 

Please note that we do not support:

  • Microsoft® Works (.wps) file types.
  • Apple Pages file types.
  • Spreadsheets created outside of Microsoft Excel (i.e. .ods).
  • GDOC files (.gdoc) which are just links to online Google Document files, but don't actually contain text or the document's content. Google Drive must be used to upload Google Docs.
  • Prezi Presentations
  • M-Files (.m format)

Therefore, if an unsupported word processor is being used, you may need to save the file as a TXT or RTF file in order to upload to Turnitin.

If a file format issue is occurring, please re-open the file in a word processor, and save the file again using the "save as" function and choosing a different format from the file type pull down menu (try RTF or TXT as they are the most "safe"). Occasionally content in document headers and footers can prevent a file from being accepted by the Turnitin service. If you encounter issues uploading a document that contains headers and footers, editing or removing the content may resolve the issue.

Footnotes: 

  1. 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 (i.e. "a~"). Also, we do NOT accept password protected files.
  2. Open Office Text: Turnitin will not accept .odt files created and downloaded from Google Docs online. Turnitin will not accept ".doc" files created using OpenOffice since OpenOffice ".doc" files are not 100% Microsoft Word equivalent.
  3. Google Docs: GDOC files (*.gdoc) which are just links to online Google Document files, but don't actually contain text or the document's content are not supported. Google Drive must be used to upload Google Docs.
  4. 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. 
  5. Microsoft PowerPoint: It is possible to submit PowerPoint files. 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. 
  6. Microsoft Excel: The version of the file that can be viewed in the Document Viewer will look the same as it would if the Excel file had been saved as a PDF and submitted to Turnitin. We highly recommend that users pay attention to the image preview provided in the single file submission to verify that the file is presented in an acceptable manner.  Users can adjust the way the file looks by editing the page setup and print area settings for the file prior to saving it and submitting it to Turnitin.  

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