Why courts reject PDF filings
E-filing rejections fall into two buckets: substantive (wrong form, missing certificate of service) and technical (the PDF itself has a problem). Technical rejections are fixable in minutes if you know what to look for. Here are the five most common technical reasons.
The most common: the PDF is not text-searchable. Scanned documents converted to PDF without OCR are image-only — the filing system's text extraction returns nothing, and many courts now require searchable text as a condition of acceptance. Fix: run OCR before filing. Adobe Acrobat, ABBYY FineReader, or a paid OCR service will do this; PrepFile does not perform OCR.
Second: wrong page size. Most federal courts and many state systems require US Letter (8.5×11 inches). A PDF exported from a system that defaults to A4 or Legal will fail this check. Fix: print to PDF specifying Letter size, or re-export from the source with the correct page size set.
Third: unflattened form fields. Courts' e-filing systems extract text from PDFs; interactive form fields are sometimes treated as non-text or cause extraction failures. Fix: in Acrobat, print to PDF (which flattens fields) or use Document → Flatten. PrepFile's pre-flight checker will flag this.
Fourth: the PDF is encrypted or password-protected. E-filing systems cannot process encrypted files. Fix: open the PDF with the password and save an unencrypted copy.
Fifth: file size. Many systems impose a per-document cap (commonly 5–25 MB). Fix: compress images in the PDF using Acrobat's Reduce File Size or Optimize PDF, or split into multiple filings.
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Pre-filing technical checklist
- Run PrepFile's E-Filing Checker on the PDF before submission.
- If text-searchable check fails: run OCR on the document.
- If page size check fails: re-export from source at US Letter.
- If form fields check flags: flatten the form in Acrobat or print to PDF.
- If encryption check fails: re-save without password protection.
- If size check fails: compress or split the document.
Questions
Does PrepFile's checker guarantee the court will accept my PDF?
No. The checker covers five common technical rules. Courts have jurisdiction-specific requirements that may go beyond these. Always read your court's local rules for e-filing.
Can PrepFile do OCR?
No. OCR requires processing image pixels to extract text — it is computationally intensive and the results need careful quality review. Use a dedicated OCR tool for scanned documents.
What is PDF/A and do I need it?
PDF/A is an ISO standard for archival PDFs. A few courts specifically require PDF/A-1a or PDF/A-1b. Client-side PDF/A validation is not practically achievable (veraPDF, the authoritative validator, is a Java application). If your court requires PDF/A, create the file from a PDF/A-capable application and check the creation application's own conformance report.