Goodnotes Education supports importing documents for markup, annotation, or sharing with Class Folders. If import issues occur, they're typically related to the documents being imported.
Supported File Types
Goodnotes can import the following file types:
- Images (.jpg, .png)
- Word (.doc, .docx) and PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx) - iPadOS/iOS only*
- Goodnotes documents (.goodnotes)
- Goodnotes backups (.goodnotes.zip) - See [Back up and restore your library manually]
- Comma- or Tab-Separated Values (.csv, .tsv)
*Note: While Goodnotes can handle Word and PowerPoint formats directly, the internal PDF conversion may not preserve the original layout perfectly. For better results, consider importing PDF versions of these files.
Troubleshooting Import Failures
Most import failures are temporary issues that can be resolved with these quick fixes:
- Force quit Goodnotes and reopen the app
- Restart your iPad completely
- Sign out of Goodnotes and sign back in
- Update Goodnotes through the App Store (or contact your admin if you don't have App Store access)
- Update your iOS/iPadOS to the latest version
- Delete and reinstall Goodnotes - This resets the cache and ensures you're running the latest version
File Size Considerations
If imports still fail after trying the above fixes:
- Check that your file is under the 50MB recommended size limit
- Files exceeding this limit may cause your device to run out of memory (RAM) during import
To reduce file size:
- Flatten PDFs before importing
- Compress files as ZIP archives before uploading
Need More Help?
If you're still experiencing issues or cannot import any documents into Goodnotes, please contact our support team.