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Marking.ai Help Centre

Combined PDFs (multiple students in one file)

If your class hands in their work as one big scan or PDF, you don’t have to split it up manually before uploading. Marking.ai can recognise a combined PDF and split it into individual submissions for you.

This article walks through how that works.

When to use combined mode

Use the Combined upload mode when you have a single PDF that contains multiple students’ work back-to-back. Common scenarios:

  • You scanned an entire class’s papers as one PDF
  • A photocopier or scanner produced a multi-page document
  • An LMS exported a single bundle

If you’ve got one file per student, use Individual mode instead — it’s quicker.

Uploading a combined PDF

  1. Open the Submissions step in the Start marking window (or click Upload submissions on an existing assessment).
  2. Switch the upload mode to Combined.
  3. Drop your combined PDF in.

Marking.ai uploads the file and then runs split detection.

Reviewing the splits

Once detection runs, you’ll see a split-review panel. Each detected submission shows:

  • The page range it covers
  • A preview of the first page
  • A name field (Marking.ai pulls the student name from the work if possible)

Review each detected submission and:

  • Adjust the page range if a split is in the wrong place
  • Edit the student name if Marking.ai got it wrong
  • Add or remove a submission if a split is missing or extra

When you’re happy, confirm the splits and Marking.ai creates each one as its own submission.

A warning before you start marking

If you try to start marking with a combined PDF that hasn’t been reviewed, Marking.ai will warn you and prompt you to review the splits first. This is to make sure you don’t accidentally mark a 30-page bundle as one student’s work.

What if the splits are completely wrong?

A few things to try:

  • Adjust manually. The page-range controls let you fix most issues in seconds.
  • Re-run detection with a clearer PDF (e.g. scans with higher resolution and clearer page breaks).
  • Upload individually if the combined file is too messy — you can switch to Individual mode and upload student-by-student.

For more, see Combined PDF wasn’t split correctly in the Troubleshooting section.

Need help?

For combined PDFs that are giving you trouble, drop us a line at connect@marking.ai and we’ll take a look.

FAQs

How does Marking.ai know where to split the PDF?

It looks for visual signals like blank pages, page-number resets, and student names. The cleaner your scan, the better the auto-split works.

What if I only have one student in my combined PDF?

That’s fine — just review the one detected split. Or use Individual mode instead, which is more direct.

Will Marking.ai create student records automatically?

If it can read a name from the work, yes — it’ll create or match a student record. You can fix or change the linked student later. See Linking a submission to a student.