How to Remove a Document From Turnitin

Turnitin -- a system that students use to submit assignments to their teachers in different classes -- accepts Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, HTML, Adobe PostScript, TXT, RTF, PDF and HWP files. Depending on the settings your teacher uses in Turnitin, you can resubmit an assignment by overwriting a previous submission or resubmit an assignment once the teacher manually deletes your first submission.

Resubmitting an Assignment

If the teacher in your class has enabled overwriting for an assignment, you can overwrite previous submissions by uploading a new supported file up until the due date for the assignment. Resubmitting overwrites and replaces any previous submissions until the due date has passed. There is no way to delete a submitted file altogether, but resubmitting does replace any previous versions that exist in the Turnitin system. Teachers must enable this option on each assignment for the resubmission feature to work. If it has not been enabled, contact your teacher before the due date to explore your options for resubmitting work.

Manually Overwriting a Submission

If your teacher has not enabled overwriting of an assignment, you must contact the teacher to have her delete your previous submission. Teachers have to manually log in to the Turnitin system to delete the previous submission for the student. When the submission has been deleted by the teacher, you can upload a new document for the assignment in question. Manually overwriting can be avoided altogether by having your teacher enable overwriting when she creates a new assignment in the Turnitin system. If your teacher is unwilling to delete a previous submission, you won't be able to submit a new file to the Turnitin system.

Deleting a Document

If you want your document to be permanently deleted from the Turnitin database without resubmission, the request must come from the school's Turnitin administrator. The request must be in writing, and must include the class ID number, assignment name and document ID number.

Consideration

As a student, you can streamline the process by keeping track of the class ID, document ID and assignment name that's given to you whenever you submit an assignment. Note that deleting your document prevents the file from being searchable within the Turnitin database in the future.