My submission processing failed — what now?
Most submissions process cleanly, but occasionally one fails. This article covers what “failed” means, why it happens, and how to recover.
How you’ll know
Failed submissions show up in a few places:
- Marked Failed in the Status column of an assessment’s submissions table
- Listed under the Failed tab of the Activity screen
- In an email alert (if you have notifications on for marking and exports)
Click the row to see what happened. Marking.ai tells you the failure type in plain English and offers the most appropriate next step.
The three common failure buckets
One-click retry (most common)
A transient error — a brief network blip, a temporary capacity issue, or similar. The fix is simple: click Retry. These almost always work on the second try.
Re-upload required
The file Marking.ai received is unreadable — maybe a corrupted PDF, very low scan quality, or an unsupported format. The fix: re-upload a clearer version. See Uploading submissions.
Fix a prerequisite
Something else needs to be in order first. Often:
- The assessment’s questions haven’t been confirmed yet — confirm them and the submission will queue itself
- The marking guide is missing or unreadable — see My marking guide wasn’t detected correctly
- A plan or workspace cap was hit during marking
Marking.ai tells you which prerequisite needs fixing and links you to the right page.
Retrying a single failed submission
From the submissions table:
- Click the failed row
- Click Retry
From the Activity screen’s Failed tab:
- Find the failed job
- Click Retry
From Marko: “retry that failed submission” or “retry the failure from Year 9 Bio”.
Retrying many at once
If several have failed in a batch, the bulk retry is much faster. See Retrying failed submissions in bulk.
If retry doesn’t work
A few things to try:
- Re-upload with a clearer file
- Check the source file — sometimes PDFs are technically valid but produced by a scanner in a way that’s hard for OCR to read. Re-scanning at higher resolution can help.
- Drop us a line at connect@marking.ai and send us the file — we can look at the underlying error.
Need help?
Click the chat icon in the app or email connect@marking.ai.
FAQs
Will I be charged for a failed submission?
No — failed submissions don’t count against your allowance. You only spend a submission when marking succeeds.
What happens to retries that fail again?
They stay in the Failed list. If you’ve retried twice and it’s still failing, the problem is likely with the file itself rather than a transient error — re-upload or get in touch.
Can I delete failed submissions?
Yes — use the row’s actions menu or bulk-select and delete. See Deleting submissions.