Why has the Similarity Report not generated?

If a Similarity Report has not generated, it could be due to any of the following reasons:

1. The assignment settings selected:
 

• If the assignment has been set to generate reports on the due date, Similarity Reports will only be available once the assignment due date and time have passed.
• The assignment settings must be set to generate Similarity Reports. If this setting is not enabled, no submissions made to the assignment will receive a report.
• A Similarity Report may not be generated, depending on the file type of the submitted paper. If any file type is allowed, Turnitin will not generate a Similarity Report for the following:
  •  Password-protected files
  •  Microsoft® Works (.wps) files
  •  Microsoft Word 2007 macros-enabled .docm files
  •  OpenOffice Text (.odt) files created and downloaded from Google Docs online
  •  Document (.doc) files created using OpenOffice
  •  Spreadsheets created outside of Microsoft Excel (i.e. .ods)
  •  Apple Pages
  •  Text with visual effects

2. The assignment settings have changed:

If when an assignment was created and the assignment settings were set to generate reports on the due date or the option to generate Similarity Reports was disabled (or both). Changing these settings to enable the generation of Similarity Reports or choosing either Immediately (first report is final) or Immediately (can overwrite reports until due date) in the advanced Similarity Report settings after submissions have been made, in some cases the Similarity Reports would not retrospectively generate*. If this is the case manual intervention may be required from the Turnitin support team. 

*Some Learning Management Systems/integrations do attempt to retrospectively generate reports (such as Desire2Learn (D2L Extended LTI – V2)

3. The submission is a resubmission:

If resubmissions are allowed within an assignment, the first three resubmissions will generate a new Similarity Report straight away. After three resubmissions, a 24-hour wait is enforced to generate Similarity Reports for all subsequent resubmissions. Therefore, Similarity Reports for a fourth resubmission and onwards will take 24 hours to generate.

• For instructor guidance on this topic, click here.
• For student guidance on this topic, click here.

4. Turnitin is unable to extract the text from within a file using the following acceptable file types:

Adobe® PDF - Turnitin will not accept PDF image files, forms, or portfolios, files that do not contain highlightable text (e.g. a scanned file - usually an image), documents containing multiple files or files created with software other than Adobe Acrobat®.

Microsoft PowerPoint® (.pptx, .ppt, .ppsx, and .pps) - Text with visual effects is not supported, and it is recommended that any visual effects such as shadows and 3D be removed prior to submitting to Turnitin. 
The third party theme ‘Slate’ is not supported when used in the creation of a PowerPoint file. When the 'Slate' theme is applied, the text in the document becomes unselectable after the file is converted into a PDF, preventing Turnitin from extracting it.


5. Turnitin service outage:

During times of service disruption, report generation may be affected. If you are experiencing issues and should have a Similarity Report, view our Turnitin system status page to check for any service disruptions.