Turnitin Not Working? Fixes and Status Meanings

How-to guidesBy the AIandSimilarityReports.com teamPublished 2026-10-214 min read

When Turnitin is not working, the cause is usually one of four things: a Turnitin outage, a problem with the link to Canvas, Moodle or Blackboard, a file Turnitin cannot read, or a report that is still processing. Here is how to tell which one, what each Turnitin status means, and what to do before your deadline.

Quick fixes

Check Turnitin's status page at turnitin.statuspage.io. Green means all systems work; yellow, amber or red mean degraded service or an outage; blue means maintenance.
Refresh, clear your cache, or try another browser. Allow third-party cookies for your LMS.
Check your file: .docx or text-based .pdf, under 100 MB and 800 pages. See Turnitin file types.
Wait a few minutes. Reports normally take minutes but can take longer at busy times. See how long a report takes.
Screenshot any error and send it to your instructor before the deadline.

Turnitin status meanings

Status	Meaning
Pending / processing	The report is being generated
Grey icon or "--"	No report yet, or the report is hidden from students
Coloured percentage	Similarity report ready; see report colours
"Similarity report could not be generated"	Unreadable file, too short, or an error
Resubmission waiting 24 hours	After three resubmissions, new reports wait 24 hours
"*%" on the AI report	AI score between 1% and 19%, not shown as a number

More: Turnitin report not available and resubmitting on Turnitin.

Turnitin not working in Canvas, Moodle or Blackboard

If the assignment will not open or the report link does nothing, the integration between your LMS and Turnitin may have an issue. That is fixed by your IT helpdesk, not by you. See who to contact.

Deadline close and Turnitin down?

We can still run your paper through Turnitin and send you both reports, $3.99 per document, so you know your score before you submit. If the AI report flags your writing, our editors can fix it:

Turnitin AI writing report showing 0% detected as AI after the paper was humanized by an editor — Turnitin AI writing report for a paper humanized by our editors: 0% detected as AI, and 0 AI-generated or AI-revised text. The submission ID is hidden for privacy.

Human editing service

Let our editors humanize it to 0% AI

Send your document and a human editor rewrites every passage Turnitin flags, in natural and clear language, until the AI writing score reaches 0%. Then the editor proofreads the whole paper for grammar, flow and consistency. No AI rewriting tools are used, so there is no humanizer pattern for Turnitin's bypasser detection to pick up.

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Words to humanize	Price
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2,500 words	$49.88
5,000 words	$99.75
10,000 words	$199.50

Edited by hand until Turnitin shows 0% AI
Your meaning, headings, sources and citations kept
Humanize the whole paper or only the sections Turnitin highlighted
Upload DOCX, DOC, PDF or TXT, or pick a paper you already checked with us
Pay by card. The edited file comes back to your dashboard and by email

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Want proof before you submit? Check the edited file with a real Turnitin AI writing report for $3.99. See how to check humanized text.

Want to humanize it yourself? Use StealthWriter Pro

If you would rather do the rewriting yourself, the best tool for the job is StealthWriter on its paid Pro plans. The paid plans unlock the stronger Ghost model and longer passages per run. The free plan only gives you the lighter Ninja model with short inputs, which is not enough for a full assignment.

Humanize one section at a time, not the whole paper in one go.
Read every paragraph afterwards. Fix any changed meaning, and put back technical terms, quotes and citations exactly as they were.
Add your own touches: a specific example, a sentence about your sources, your course's terms.
Run a Turnitin AI report on the result before you submit. No tool can promise 0% every time.

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Frequently asked questions

Why is Turnitin not working?

Usually an outage, an LMS integration problem, an unreadable file, or a report still processing.

How do I know if Turnitin is down?

Check turnitin.statuspage.io. Yellow, amber or red mean degraded service or an outage.

What does pending mean on Turnitin?

The report is still being generated. Resubmissions after the third wait 24 hours.

Quick fixes

Turnitin status meanings

Turnitin not working in Canvas, Moodle or Blackboard

Deadline close and Turnitin down?

Frequently asked questions

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