This article covers some Goodnotes Education Plan features that Free Plan users do not have access to, such as Class Folders. To upgrade, contact your institution's IT administrator.
Sometimes, imported files may display differently in Goodnotes than they did in their original application. This commonly occurs with PowerPoint files or certain types of PDFs.
Supported file formats
Goodnotes supports the following formats for importing. Formats marked with an asterisk (*) may occasionally have compatibility issues:
- Image (.jpg, .png)
- Word (.doc, .docx) and PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx) (iPadOS/iOS only) (*)
- Goodnotes document (.goodnotes)
- Goodnotes backup (.goodnotes.zip). See Back up and restore your library manually.
- Comma- or Tab-Separated Values file (.csv, .tsv). The app can import a file in this format to create a study set. See Study with Study Sets.
(*) Goodnotes can handle these formats directly, but the internal conversion to PDF may not preserve the original layout perfectly. Importing PDF versions of these files can avoid this issue and give you better results.
Troubleshooting import issues
If your file is a supported format but still has display problems, the issue may be:
- The PDF is too large or contains complex graphical elements that are difficult to render
- The Word or PowerPoint file includes features that Goodnotes does not support, or the page size is incompatible with your template
To resolve import issues:
- For Word, PowerPoint, or similar documents, export them as PDF files in their original application before importing into Goodnotes.
- For problematic PDFs, try re-exporting from the original source, or use an online compression tool to reduce file size and flatten layers.
Missing content after export and re-import
When you export a document from Goodnotes, certain educational features will not be included:
- Answer Zones (Goodnotes Education feature)
- Student annotations in Class Folders
If you export and re-import a document from a Class Folder, these elements will be missing. This is expected behavior, as these features are specific to Goodnotes Education and do not exist in standard PDF format.
Still experiencing issues?
If compression or exporting from the original source doesn't resolve the problem:
- Verify the issue is with the document itself by asking a colleague to import the same file.
- Check whether students are also affected by this issue.
- Contact your Admin for further support, or visit the Goodnotes Help Center for additional support.