Accepted file formats.

The same formats are accepted for every document type, in every industry.

• Word .docx The most common source format.
• PDF .pdf Must contain real text. A scan of a page has nothing to read.
• Excel .xlsx Every sheet is read, with column headers kept alongside their values.
• CSV .csv Headers are kept alongside their values.
• Plain text .txt, .md Read as-is.

What is not accepted

Images, video, audio, archives and presentation files are not accepted — neither is a scanned PDF with no text layer. A document that cannot be read cannot be checked for sensitive information before it is stored.

If you have a scanned document, run it through OCR first, or upload the original it was scanned from.

Size

Files up to 25 MB. If you have something larger, get in touch — it is usually a scanned manual that is far smaller once it has been through OCR.

Why the text has to be real

Screening runs on the text extracted from a file, before the file is stored. A scanned page is a picture of words, not words — so there is nothing to route it by, and nothing to check it for sensitive information against. A document that cannot be read cannot be governed, so it is refused rather than passed through silently.