Although Turnitin accepts Microsoft PowerPoint files, certain visual designs, themes, or formatting choices can prevent our system from extracting the text and generating a Similarity Report.
Before troubleshooting, please ensure your document meets our baseline file requirements (such as being under 100MB and containing at least 20 words of text). If your file meets those requirements but still won't process, review the common causes and solutions below:
Not enough extractable text
Turnitin requires a minimum amount of actual text to generate a Similarity Report. If your slides primarily consist of images, charts, or scanned documents, our software cannot read them.
The fix: Ensure your presentation contains at least 20 words of actual, typed text rather than flattened images of text.
Shadows and 3D text effects
While Turnitin supports PowerPoint files, text that utilizes advanced visual effects—such as shadows, reflections, WordArt, or 3D formatting—cannot be read by our text-extraction software.
The fix: Manually remove these visual effects from your text boxes or change your presentation's design to a simpler theme (such as the standard Office theme) before resubmitting.
The Slate design theme
There is a known compatibility issue with Microsoft PowerPoint files created using the Slate theme. When Turnitin processes a PowerPoint, it converts it behind the scenes into a PDF to pull the text. When the Slate theme is applied, Microsoft's conversion locks the text, making it unselectable and unreadable to Turnitin.
Note: This is not a Turnitin issue. The issue can be reproduced by saving your presentation as a PDF manually—the text will likely be unselectable.
The fix: Change the presentation design to a plain theme, save the file, and resubmit it.
Still having trouble?
Before contacting support, please check with your instructor to confirm how the assignment was configured. Similarity Reports may be intentionally turned off for that specific assignment, or set to generate only on the assignment's due date.