Preparing Documents for Upload

PS: Join our free weekly interactive Issuu Academy Workshop (North America) or Issuu Academy Workshop (EU) for a live demo on the best practices to prepare your document for upload and interact with our Customer Success Team.

While preparing documents for upload, here are some guidelines to avoid conversion problems and to ensure that your file is correctly formatted for upload.

Basic Document Requirements

Document Size (Content Upload Limit)

All plans come with different amount of public uploads. All free accounts are able to upload 2 public documents per year. Starter comes with 6 public document per year, Premium comes with 12 public documents per year, and with Optimum you get Unlimited. If you want to set your content to Unlisted, every Issuu plan comes with a limited number of free Unlisted documents. Once you reach that limit, you can subscribe to one of our Unlisted content packages.

Please see article for more information: Reaching the Unlisted Content Limit.

The limitations on the size of the document per upload for both Public and Unlisted content and the document size depends on the plan you choose.

• Free, Starter and legacy Pro Plans: 500 pages per upload, up to 100MB in size
• Legacy Plus Plan: 500 pages per upload, up to 250MB in size

• Premium and Optimum Plans: 5000 pages per upload, up to 500MB in size

NOTE: Legacy Pro and Legacy Plus plans are no longer available for new users.

Page Dimension

The Issuu reading experience is responsive, and will adapt to various screen sizes from desktops to mobile devices. This means that you can upload a document with any page dimensions. You can always upload your document as a draft which gives you the opportunity to check that how your publication will appear before you publish it on Issuu.

Single Page Spreads

Short Video on Correct Page Formatting:

If you upload your document with single-page spreads, our system will automatically convert it to 2-page spreads. If you upload your content with 2-page spreads, it will show up on Issuu as 4 pages.

Accepted File Format

Our most highly recommended file format is PDF, but we understand the need for others. Issuu supported file format include:

• Word .doc, .docx
• PowerPoint .ppt, .pptx
• OpenOffice .ods, .odp, .odt, .sxw
• WordPerfect .wpd
• Rich Text Format .rtf
• StarOffice .sxi

It is also important to take following points into consideration while preparing documents for upload:

• Make sure your document will open without problems in a desktop reader (e.g. Acrobat Reader or Preview)
• Remember that Issuu conversion system takes only the 1st 50 characters of a filename to construct the publication's URL.
• Make sure your file is not password protected
• Make sure user access is not restricted
• It should allow printing and copying.
• Image resolution can be up to 150 dpi. Higher resolutions will be scaled down to suit web usage
• If you have added links, then export the document as Interactive PDF

NOTE: If you are using InDesign to create your content, you can download this Issuu Export Preset and add it to your presets to ensure that during the export process, your PDF is Issuu-ready. If you encounter upload problems, refer to this guide.

Happy Uploading!