TurnItIn for Students: User Guides, Manuals & Tutorials: File Types Accepted by Turnitin

To submit a paper to Turnitin, your paper must meet the submission requirements. If an assignment is set to "Allow Any File Type," Turnitin will accept any file that is less than 20 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.

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

1. Microsoft Word® (.doc / .docx)

2. Microsoft Excel® (.xls and .xlsx) 

3. OpenOffice Text (.odt)

4. Google Docs via Google Drive™ 

5. WordPerfect®  (.wpd)

6. PostScript (.ps/.eps)

7. Adobe® PDF

8. HTML 

9. Rich text format (.rtf)

10. Plain text (.txt)

11. Hangul Word Processor file (.hwp)

12. Microsoft PowerPoint® (.pptx, .ppt, .ppsx, and .pps)

The paper being submitted must contain more than 20 words, must be under 20MB , must not exceed 400 pages in length, and must not contain spaces in between every letter (l i k e  t h i s).

Turnitin doesn't support:

1. Microsoft® Works (.wps) file types.
2. Apple Pages file types.
3. OpenOffice Text (.odt) created and downloaded from Google Docs online
4. Spreadsheets created outside of Microsoft Excel (i.e. .ods).
5. PDF files of images.
6. Microsoft Office 365 files created with Microsoft Online / Microsoft OneDrive
7. Microsoft Word 2007 macros-enabled (.docm) files
8. ".doc" files created using OpenOffice
9. Password protected files.
10. Odt files created and downloaded from Google Docs online
11. 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.

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

It's highly recommend that users pay attention to the image preview provided in the single file submission after clicking on "Upload" button to verify that the file is presented in an acceptable manner. 

• 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 (i.e. "a~"). Also, we do NOT accept password protected files.

•  Note - 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.

• Note - 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.
• 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.