Can You Delete a Turnitin Submission? The 3-Step Official Path for Permanent Removal

You can't delete it yourself. Turnitin's official page "Can I delete my paper from Turnitin?" states that permanent removal must be processed through your academic institution because Turnitin cannot process deletion requests directly from students. The good news: a mistaken file doesn't need deletion — resubmitting to the same assignment overwrites the previous draft. Real removal from the database is a three-step institutional process (Submission ID → instructor → administrator), not a button in your dashboard.

The official wording is explicit:

"If you need to permanently remove a submitted paper from the Turnitin database, you must process this request through your academic institution. For contractual and data privacy reasons, Turnitin cannot process deletion requests directly from students."

Two reasons are named: contractual obligations and data privacy. The paper entered the database under the institution's contract, so the institution — not the student — is the party that can ask for it to come out. The student guide for managing submissions says the same from the other side:

"Once you have made a submission, you will be unable to delete it from the assignment."

There is no student-facing delete flow in the dashboard. The interface simply doesn't offer it.

The official page immediately redirects you away from deletion:

"If you simply want to fix a mistake or submit a new version of your paper, you do not need to delete your previous submission. Resubmitting to the same assignment will automatically overwrite your previous draft."

The mechanics come from the resubmission guide:

"If your instructor has enabled resubmissions and the due date has not passed, you may resubmit your assignment up to three times in 24 hours. The 24 hours starts from when you make your first submission or resubmission of that day."

"Resubmitting overwrites your previous submission, so any grading will be lost. As your resubmission overwrites any previous submissions, they will not match against each other in your Similarity Report."

Three practical consequences: overwriting removes the old version from the assignment inbox, any grading on the old version is lost, and the overwritten drafts don't match against each other in the report. Our resubmission guide covers how scores shift after an overwrite.

When nothing short of database removal will do, the official page gives three steps:

"Step 1: Locate your Submission ID. Open your paper in the Feedback Studio document viewer. Click the information icon ('i') located in the right-hand sidebar. Copy the Submission ID listed in the document details."

"Step 2: Contact your instructor. Reach out to the instructor of the course and provide them with the following details: The Submission ID / The Class Name / The Assignment Name where the paper was uploaded."

"Step 3: Wait for administrative action. Once you provide this information to your instructor, they will need to raise the request for permanent paper deletion with your institution's Turnitin administrator."

The Submission ID — which our digital receipt guide explains — is the key that starts the whole chain. You cannot skip to the administrator; the instructor is the required relay.

A related official page ("How can I remove a submission from the assignment inbox?") draws a line that matters if anyone tells you a submission has been "removed":

"When a submission is removed from the assignment inbox, it is not permanently deleted from the system. Instead, the submission is unindexed and removed from the Turnitin repository."

Two consequences are stated explicitly:

"Unindexed means the paper is no longer included in Turnitin's comparison database. As a result, its content will not be checked against or matched with any future submissions. This action also does not update existing Similarity Reports: If the submission already appears as a match in a Similarity Report, the match will remain."

So "removed from the inbox" = "unindexed": it stops matching future submissions, but any match already visible in existing reports stays there. The inverse also matters: a submission that still sits in the inbox is still indexed and still matches. This is the same inbox-vs-database distinction our missing-submission guide covers.

• Wrong file, deadline ahead: resubmit. It overwrites, and the old draft doesn't match your new one in the report.
• Wrong file, deadline passed: ask the instructor. Overwriting may no longer be available; the instructor decides how to handle it under institution policy.
• Something in the database, not just the inbox: follow the three steps — Submission ID, instructor, institution administrator.
• Grading already applied: resubmitting wipes the grade on the old version. Check with the instructor before overwriting a graded submission.
• Just want a copy of what's stored: download rather than delete. Our download guide covers getting the PDF and the digital receipt.

Students cannot delete their own Turnitin submissions — the delete button does not exist, and the official page explains why (contract and data privacy). A wrong file is fixed by resubmission, which overwrites the previous draft (max three resubmissions in 24 hours when enabled). Permanent database removal runs through an institutional chain: Submission ID → instructor → institution administrator. And remember the distinction: removing something from the inbox unindexes it but does not delete it from the database, and existing matches in old reports stay. Deleting is a process, not a button — and for most mistakes, resubmission is the process you actually need.