Short, practical reads on getting a PDF accepted by a court the first time.
Parts 1/2/3, conformance levels a/b/u, and what the standard actually forbids — in plain English.
The mechanical reasons clerks bounce documents, from non-searchable scans to embedded attachments.
A checklist of the failures we see most, each with the fix.
Word, Acrobat, LibreOffice, and what to do with scans — then how to verify the result.
The Tyler-system automated rejection decoded: page size, forms, passwords, fonts — cause and fix for each.
veraPDF, LibreOffice and browser-based paths — and what each one misses.
Why courts reject locked PDFs, and how to clear user and owner passwords free.
Too dark, upside down, bleed-through, over-300-dpi — the defects clerks name, and the 300 dpi band.
Illinois rejects both directions by rule number — how to decide what "one document" is, and what merges break.
Florida, Illinois, NY AD1 and the Ninth Circuit side by side: required flavour, the controlling document, and what each court actually rejects on.
PDF/A-2a preferred, prohibited elements, the font-embedding trap — from the portal's own FAQ.
Text-searchable mandatory, 100 MB, the CM/ECF rejection list — from the court's Technical Guide.
Certified PDF/A, bookmarks that mirror the TOC, initial view, 100 MB NYSCEF auto-reject.
The official rejection standards table (eff. 9/1/2024): illegible scans, combine/split rules by number.
Primary sources only — the statute, form or paper this page is built on.