What types of files may be used in assignments folders?
D2L itself imposes few restrictions upon file types that may be uploaded to, submitted via, and downloaded from, assignments folders. The assignments tool accepts files of nearly all types; however, certain grading features of the tool only work with select file formats, detailed below.
All files submitted to assignments folders must have appropriate file extensions (e.g. .doc, .pdf, .rtf) in order for the in-line document viewer and Turnitin tools to function properly.
D2L's In-Line Document Viewer
The in-line document viewer supports only the file types listed below. Files of other types must be downloaded and then opened in appropriate, external applications.
Text documents
- Corel WordPerfect (.wpd)
- Extensible Markup Language (.xml)
- Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) 1
- OpenDocument Text Document (.odt) 1
- plain text (.txt) 1
- Portable Document Format (.pdf)
- Rich Text Format (.rtf, .rtfx) 1
- web pages (.htm, .html, .mht, .mhtml) 1
Presentations
Spreadsheets
- Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
Images
- Bitmap image file format (.bmp)
- Graphics Interchange Format (.gif) 1
- Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpg, .jpeg) 1
- Portable Network Graphics (.png) 1
- Tagged Image File Format (.tif, .tiff) 1
Audio/Video
For better, more reliable playback across devices, plus options for supplementing, modifying, and reusing your video and audio, please use the My Media tools (MU Video) instead of uploading video or audio files to D2L directly.
- Flash (.swf)
- MP3 (.mp3)
- MPEG (.mpg, .mpeg)
- MPEG-4 (.mp4, .m4v, .m4a)
- QuickTime (.mov)
- RealAudio and RealVideo (.rm, .ra, .ram)
- Waveform Audio File Format (.wav)
- Windows Media (.wmv, .wma, .avi, .asf) 2
Notes
- In Assignments instructors may annotate student submissions of these file formats.
- Firefox cannot reliably play Windows Media files shown with D2L's in-line viewer. Use the My Media tools instead.
Turnitin Feedback Studio
Turnitin Feedback Studio only processes text and only in files of certain file types.
Turnitin-compatible File Types
If Turnitin Online Grading or Similarity Report have been enabled for a particular assignments folder, then only the following file types should be used with that folder:
- Corel WordPerfect (.wpd)
- Encapsulated PostScript (.eps)
- Hangul Word Processor (.hwp)
- Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx, .pps, .ppsx) 4
- Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) 5
- OpenDocument Format Text (.odt) 6
- plain text (.txt)
- Portable Document Format (.pdf) 7
- PostScript (.ps)
- Rich Text Format (.rtf)
- web pages (.htm, .html)
Turnitin-incompatible File Types
- any file with fewer than 20 machine-readable (selectable) words of text
- any password protected file
- Apple Pages (.pages)
- Microsoft Word (.doc) files created by OpenOffice or LibreOffice
- Microsoft Word macro-enabled (.docm)
- Microsoft Works (.wps)
- OpenDocument Format Spreadsheet (.ods)
- OpenDocument Format Text (.odt) files created by Google Docs
- any other file type not included in the list of Turnitin-compatible file types above
Regardless of file type, files submitted to Turnitin must contain machine-readable, selectable text. Non-selectable text, such as text in images or text with special effects (e.g. text with shadows, text in WordArt), will not be recognized or processed by the Turnitin tools.
Scanning paper documents into a computer generally creates files with only images of text that cannot be processed by the Turnitin tools. Most scanned documents will not work with Turnitin.
Notes
4. Turnitin automatically converts PowerPoint presentations to PDF, removing presenter notes, sounds, videos, and animations. The Turnitin tools will not recognize any text enhanced with effects such as 3D or shadows.
5. OpenOffice and LibreOffice documents saved in Microsoft Word format are not 100% Word-compatible and may not work in the Turnitin tools. Have students using OpenOffice or LibreOffice save in another file format such as PDF, Rich Text Format, or plain text.
6. OpenDocument Format Text files created by Google Docs do not work in the Turnitin tools. Have students using Google Docs save in another file format such as Word, PDF, Rich Text Format, or plain text.
7. The Turnitin tools work best with PDF files created using Adobe Acrobat. PDF files created using other software may not be fully compatible with Turnitin.
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