PDF requirements for e-filing in the Pennsylvania courts using PACFile

What the court requires

The limit is 500 MB per document. PACFile is the Unified Judicial System's e-filing system for the Supreme, Superior and Commonwealth Courts and for the courts of common pleas that have adopted it. Some counties use their own e-filing systems with lower limits (for example, Lehigh County's limit is 25 MB per document), so check your county. All documents must be PDFs.

“The document must be less than 500 MB (megabytes) in size.”

Common reasons filings are rejected

• The document is not a PDF.
• A county that doesn't use PACFile has a lower limit.
• The PDF is password-protected or has security restrictions.
• The PDF is password-protected or has security restrictions, so the court's system can't open it.

Questions about the Pennsylvania PACFile's PDF rules

What is the maximum PDF file size for the Pennsylvania PACFile?

500 MB per PDF.

What should I do if my PDF is too large for the Pennsylvania PACFile?

Split it into consecutive parts that are each under 500 MB, never cutting a page in half, and file the first part as the main document and the rest as attachments named in order (for example "Exhibit A, Part 2 of 3"). For scanned documents, re-scanning in black and white at 300 dpi often shrinks the file enough to avoid splitting. Docket Prime can split the file for you in your browser.

Does the Pennsylvania PACFile require text-searchable PDFs?

The published rules we found don't require it. Documents saved directly from a word processor are searchable and much smaller than scans; for paper documents, OCR adds searchable text.

What page size does the Pennsylvania PACFile accept?

Letter size (8.5 × 11 inches) is expected. Legal-size or A4 pages may print badly or be refused, so resize them to letter.