Court systems reject files over their limit, and some reject them after the upload appears to succeed. Large files are almost always scans saved at high resolution or in color.
Limits on this site
1. Rescan smarter
300 dpi black and white is what most courts ask for and produces small files. Use color only where color matters, such as photos.
2. Compress the PDF
- Adobe Acrobat Pro: choose File, then Save as Other, then Reduced Size PDF.
- Mac Preview: choose File, then Export, and set Quartz Filter to Reduce File Size. Check that small text is still readable.
- Ghostscript (free):
gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sOutputFile=smaller.pdf input.pdf. The /printer setting keeps images at 300 dpi.
3. Split it
If it is still too big, split the file and upload the parts as attachments to the main document, which federal CM/ECF courts allow. In Acrobat, use Organize Pages and Split. On a Mac, drag page thumbnails out of Preview into a new document.
Last updated October 18, 2026. Menu names can vary by software version.