There are a number of reasons you may receive an error when uploading documents. Some of the common issues include:
- Your Uploaded documents must be less than 5MB in size, unencrypted, and one of the accepted document types: GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, RTF, PDF, or Word (DOC or DOCX).
- Documents must NOT be password protected. Often universities will encrypt transcripts in order to ensure they are not altered. If you suspect your transcripts are encrypted you will need to print and re-scan them.
- Ensure that your filename is 100 characters or fewer, including spaces. Consider using abbreviations while trying to preserve a clear name describing what the document contains.
- If you are scanning documents into your computer and are over the 5MB size limit, the scanning software will typically offer to save files in TIFF or BMP format, or perhaps PDF. These are likely to be too large. The software may also offer to save as JPG (or JPEG) which is far more compact. In addition, the software may allow you to select lower quality for an even smaller file size. We have found 50% quality still looks quite good and results in a file size often less than a tenth of the original.
- If your scanning software does not let you save the file in a compact format, there are free downloads out there that do. One such that we are aware of for Windows is called Irfanview. On recent Mac systems, Preview will perform this function.
If you are unable to upload your file and it meets the above criteria, please also ensure that you did not include any special characters (parentheses, commas, hyphens, etc.) or blank spaces in the file name of your document(s). For example, use JohnsDD214.png and OF306.pdf rather than John’s DD-214.png or OF-306.pdf.
For more information see: Uploading a document.