Why Your PDF Got Rejected (And How to Fix It in 2 Minutes)
The most common reasons a concours portal rejects your PDF — and the fastest way to fix each one, without losing readability.
You filled out the form, attached your dossier, hit submit — and got an error. "File too large." "Invalid format." No explanation, no second chance, and the deadline is tonight.
Here are the actual reasons this happens, in order of how often we see them.
1. The file is simply too big
This is the number one cause. Most Moroccan concours portals cap uploads at 500 KB, 1 MB, or 2 MB per PDF — and a phone-scanned document with a few pages of photos routinely comes out at 8–15 MB. The portal doesn't tell you the limit clearly, it just rejects the file.
Fix: compress the PDF to the exact limit the portal states (check the form's fine print or the notice PDF). Don't guess — a compressor that undershoots wastes quality you didn't need to lose, and one that overshoots gets you rejected again.
2. It's not actually a PDF
Some scanning apps save a "PDF" that's really a container around a HEIC or WebP image, which some strict validators choke on. Others export password-protected or form-locked PDFs that break automated portal parsers.
Fix: re-save through a plain PDF re-encoder. If you assembled the file yourself from photos, make sure the images going in are JPEG/PNG, not HEIC.
3. Too many pages, or pages in the wrong order
Portals for CIN, diplomas, and certificates often expect a specific page count (front, back, one attestation per document) and reject dossiers that bundle everything into one giant scan or that have pages upside down / out of order.
Fix: split the PDF back into individual pages, check orientation, and reassemble only what's asked for.
4. Scanned at a resolution nobody asked for
Ironically, scanning "extra safe" at 600 DPI often backfires — it inflates the file size without making the text any more legible to a human reviewer, and pushes you straight past the size limit. See our DPI guide for why this matters less than people think.
The fast path
- Open the exact file that got rejected.
- Check the portal's stated size limit (usually printed near the upload button).
- Run it through a PDF compressor targeting that exact number.
- Re-upload the same file — don't rescan from scratch unless the content itself was wrong.
All of this can be done entirely in your browser — no email attachments, no third-party upload tools holding a copy of your ID documents on a server somewhere.