Supported file types and size limits

We read .doc, .docx, .pdf, and .txt files, up to 10MB.

Uploading is free on every plan, and it is the fastest way to get started, because we read the resume you already have into editable sections instead of asking you to type it in again.

The formats we accept

Anything else is turned away before it is read, with Please upload a file in one of these formats: .doc, .docx, .pdf, or .txt.

That includes Pages documents, .rtf, .odt, Keynote files, and images. The way through is to open the file in Pages, Google Docs, or Word, export it as a PDF or a .docx, and upload the exported copy.

Image coming soon

A note on .txt

Plain text uploads are accepted, and the upload box on the Resumes page is the place to use them. Some of the other file pickers in the app are set to PDF, DOC, and DOCX, so if a .txt file will not select where you are, go to the Resumes page or paste the text in directly.

Size: up to 10MB

Every upload accepts files up to 10MB.

A resume is almost never 10MB of words, so a file that large is nearly always carrying an embedded photo, a company logo, or a background graphic. Two things usually bring it back down:

• Remove the images and export the document again.
• Print to PDF rather than exporting, which normally recompresses what is inside.

It is worth doing even if your file is already under the limit, because those same heavy graphics are what stops an applicant tracking system reading your resume properly.

Pasting your resume instead

You can paste your resume text rather than uploading a file, which sidesteps the format question entirely. That makes it the right move for a format we do not read and for a PDF that turns out to be a scan, since in both cases the text is sitting on your screen already.

PDFs that are pictures of a resume

A PDF made by scanning or photographing a page contains no text at all, only a picture of text. It uploads and then comes back empty, because there was nothing in the file to extract.

You will see We couldn't extract any text from your file. For PDFs, make sure it's text-based and not a scanned image. The fix is to find the original document and export a fresh PDF from it, which produces a file with real text inside.

Password-protected PDFs

A protected PDF is turned away with This PDF appears to be password-protected. Please remove the password and try again. Open it, save an unprotected copy, and upload that instead. See My PDF is password protected.

Word files that will not open

There are two messages you might see here, and each one names its own fix.

• We couldn't extract any text from this .doc file. Try saving it as .docx or .pdf and uploading again.
• We couldn't extract any text from this .docx file. Try opening it in Google Docs or Microsoft Word, save as a new file, and re-upload.

Re-saving works more often than it sounds like it should, because opening the file in Word or Google Docs and saving a new copy rewrites it with the current version of the format rather than whatever wrote it originally.

Still not uploading?

See Why won't my resume file upload?, which covers the case where an upload looks like it failed but actually went through.