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Prepare a PDF for court e-filing or an upload portal

Court e-filing systems and government portals set their own rules for uploads, typically a maximum file size and documents that can no longer be edited. Always check your court's or portal's current requirements; this guide shows how to meet the common ones without sending your documents to a conversion website.

Open Split PDF

What portals commonly ask for

• A maximum size per file, often tens of megabytes. A larger filing must be split into parts.
• No fillable fields or comments that can still change: flatten them.
• Text that can be searched and selected. Scanned pages need text recognition first.
• No hidden author information you did not mean to file.
• Requirements differ from one court or portal to another and change over time. Their own rules always win.

The quick route: the court filing recipe

On the Workflow page, the ready-made court filing recipe runs Lock form entries (flatten), Remove author info, Compress PDF and Split PDF by file size (35 MB per part) in one go, on every file you drop. Change the size in the Split PDF step to match your portal before running.

Step by step

1. If the document is a scan, run Text recognition (OCR) first so its text can be searched.
2. Open Workflow and choose the court filing recipe, or run the tools one after another.
3. In Split PDF, choose "By file size" and set the largest part to your portal's limit.
4. Run, then download the parts: brief-part-1.pdf, brief-part-2.pdf and so on.
5. Open each part and check the pages before you file.

Things to know

• A single page larger than the limit becomes a part on its own. Compress it harder or scan it again.
• Flattening removes the ability to fill in fields, so keep your editable original.
• Redact before you file: use Black out (redact), then run the steps above.

Open Split PDF

Last updated: 2026-09-14