A Student Guide to Turnitin and PDFs

Turnitin does accept PDF documents, but the file must contain text. The system will not accept any of the following:

• PDF image files.
• Portfolios.
• Forms.
• Files without highlightable text (for example, a scanned file like an image).
• Documents that contain multiple files.
• Files created with software other than Adobe Acrobat.
  

To successfully submit a Turnitin PDF or document, you’ll want to make sure that your file meets the following requirements:

• Is smaller than 100MB.
• Contains at least 20 words (unless the assignment instructions request otherwise).
• Has fewer than 800 pages (.xls/.xlsx and .csv files must contain less than 450 pages).

Turnitin detects similarity rather than plagiarism. A Similarity Report is produced to provide your teachers and markers with the information they need to make the right judgements on assignments.

It will compare how similar your work is to other outside sources. These include:

• Internet sources.
• Academic papers.
• Other student papers.

Your professor or school might set your assignments to only allow documents that Turnitin can inspect for similarity. This means that the software will only accept files that can generate Similarity Reports.

Accepted files include:

• Portable Document Format (PDF).
• Microsoft Word (DOC and DOCX).
• Adobe PostScript.
• Google Docs via Google Drive.
• Hangul (HWP and HWPX).
• PowerPoint (PPTX).
• Corel WordPerfect.
• HTML.
• Adobe PostScript.
• Plain text (TXT).
• Rich Text Format (RTF).
• OpenOffice (ODT).

Submitting your assignments as PDFs can save you a lot of headaches. These handy little files are great for printing, sending, and combining multiple formats into one.

For many students, it’s a toss-up between PDF or Word documents when submitting work to Turnitin. Word documents are a popular choice, but there are plenty of benefits to making a PDF submission.

For example:

• You can combine multiple file formats.
• The document formatting is preserved.
• They’re ideal for receiving feedback – comments and highlights can be made with the free Adobe online PDF Editor.
• Files are available for everyone to access (with no subscription needed).
• The compressed files are easy to send.
• Images, graphics, or videos can be easily added.
• You get additional security and password protection features.

When deciding which file type to upload to Turnitin – whether it’s Word, PDF, or any other type of document – always refer to your teacher’s submission instructions. This way, you guarantee that you’ve made the right choice.