Turnitin Feedback Studio is a text-similarity reporting service. To provide this service, Turnitin relies on being able to evaluate the text in submissions made to it. Files that may be uploaded as part of Turnitin Feedback Studio assignment submissions must, therefore, be in compliance with the formats and requirements set out below.

When preparing assignments or providing troubleshooting guidance, please take careful note of the following:

Accepted File Types

To perform similarity checking and reporting, Turnitin accepts files in the following file formats only:

  • Microsoft Word (.doc and .docx)
  • Portable Document Format (.pdf) (preferably created using Adobe Acrobat, GoogleDocs or Microsoft Office Suite)
  • Microsoft PowerPoint format (.ppt and .pptx)
  • Microsoft Excel format (.xls and .xlxs)
  • Plain text files (.txt)
  • Rich Text format (.rtf)
  • HTML format (.htm or .html)
  • HTML (.htm and .html)
  • Adobe PostScript (.ps)
  • OpenDocument format (.odt) (these files must be uploaded from GoogleDocs and not previously downloaded for upload)

Files must:

  • Contain readable text: images and other types of media will not be readable and may be rejected.
  • Not be encrypted, hidden, password protected, set to read-only or be system file format as they will be rejected.
  • Not be in any other format. Other formats, such as Apple Pages files, will not be readable and will be rejected.

Maximum File Sizes

Files submitted to Turnitin must:

  • Not exceed 100MB in size for most files (for Plain Text (.txt) files the maximum size may not be more than 2MB).
  • Contain not more than 800 pages.

Minimum Readable/Highlightable Text

Turnitin Feedback Studio assignments requires a minimum of 20 readable words in the submission being made. Turnitin performs a check of files at the time of submission and may reject a file if the minimum text cannot be identified. Where the submission is not acceptable, an advisory message will be displayed and no submission will be recorded.

Where a cover page is used on a submission, ensure that the minimum 20 readable words are present on this page. Image-only title-paged submissions are likely to be rejected.

Scanned text pages and images of text pages will be rejected. Scanned files should be presented once optical character recognition has been performed and the file saved in .pdf format. While image files present text that may be readable to the human eye, this text is not accessible to Turnitin and will be rejected. As a test, the text in a file can be selected and copied, the text is likely to be readable by Turnitin.

Additional Information

For more information from Turnitin on Acceptable File Types, please visit: