Vt. eFiling: How to Flatten a PDF Document

Flattened PDF’s for e-Filing

Odyssey File and Serve (“OFS”), hosted by Tyler Technologies, requires e-filed documents to be “flat.”

Flattening a PDF means to remove multiple layers or interactive elements such as checkboxes, text

boxes, and radio buttons out of the file and makes the file more printer friendly and non-editable. It is

best to remove active hyperlinks and re-flatten after any “docu-sign” type signature has been added to

the document.

If an e-filed document is not flat, it may error out on the court clerk review side of the system. Many

times, the only option the clerk has is to reject the document and often the clerk cannot determine the

reason the document is not flat.

If a non-flat PDF does make it into the Odyssey case management system from OFS, it often has a very

large file size; cannot be emailed or correctly printed; unable to be file stamped or signed by the court;

and often unable to be viewed or downloaded from the Public Portal.

The two most common ways to flatten a document:

Print Document to PDF

1. Open Document

2. Click File

3. Click Print

4. At Printer – select “Microsoft Print to PDF” (or Adobe or another PDF program)

5. Click Print

6. Box opens to save new document to your computer

7. Name file

8. Save

Print Document to Printer, Scan Back In

1. Open Document

2. Print to Printer

3. Scan document back to computer

*Please Note – some errors occur on the Filer side of File and Serve and indicates a “Submission Failure.”

This might happen if the document is too large to efile (max. doc size is 25MB) for example. When this

happens, the filing does not make it into the court clerk reviewer side of things and is not anything the

clerk can see.

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