The problem is usually not the one you think
An upload fails. Sometimes there is an error, often there is not, and occasionally the error is actively misleading — Kenya's eTA reports an oversized photo as a network error, so people spend an evening restarting their router.
Meanwhile you have eleven documents and no idea which one the system objected to.
This checks a file against what the portal actually requires, before you spend another hour on the form.
The check that matters most is the one you cannot do yourself
File size you can see for yourself. Encryption you cannot.
A password-protected PDF opens perfectly on your own machine, because your reader has remembered the password. There is no padlock, no prompt, no hint. Then you upload it and the portal refuses it, usually without saying why.
Bank statements are the single most common source, since many banks issue them protected by default — and bank statements are exactly what visa and immigration applications ask for. USCIS says plainly not to encrypt or password protect files. Australia's Home Affairs says its system rejects encrypted PDFs and notes these are often documents downloaded straight from a website.
If a check here comes back failing on password protection, remove the password and try again.
Contents, not file names
Renaming a file does not convert it. A photograph called statement.pdf is still a photograph, and a portal reading the first few bytes will see that immediately even though your computer shows a PDF icon.
This tool reads those same bytes. If the name and the contents disagree, it tells you, because that mismatch produces some of the most baffling rejections there are.
Where the rules come from, and where they do not
Every rule shows its source and the date it was checked, before you upload anything. Two things are kept separate and never blended:
- Official — the operator's own website. USCIS, IRCC, Home Affairs, the federal courts.
- Reported — people quoting what the portal told them, because the portal publishes nothing. Kenya's eTA is the clearest example: there is no specification anywhere, and the only figures that exist come from travellers repeating the message they were shown.
A reported rule is a strong hint. It is not a guarantee, and this tool says so on screen rather than letting you assume otherwise.
Where we have no verified rule, the check is skipped and labelled as skipped. That is deliberate. A tool that says PASS is trusted in a way an article is not, so an invented rule here would do real damage — a rejected application, on a deadline, because software sounded confident.
What this cannot tell you
- Whether the content is right. It checks the file, not whether you attached the correct document or whether your bank statement covers the right months.
- Rules that only exist inside a login. Many portals never publish their specifications, and some vary them per service or per application type.
- Whether a limit changed this morning. Check the linked source if the stakes are high. It takes seconds.