Does Your Turnitin Submission ID Change When You Resubmit? What a Same ID Actually Means

No, a successful resubmission does not keep the old Submission ID. Turnitin's own guide to viewing submission information states that the Submission ID and date change for each new submission made to the assignment.

So if you resubmitted and the ID on screen looks like the one from your earlier attempt, one of two things is true: you are looking at the old submission (the receipt or report from the previous version), or your new upload never became a new submission in the first place. Neither is a reason to panic—but both are reasons to check, and the check takes less than a minute.

Turnitin's "Viewing submission information" page describes the Submission Info box in the document viewer, which shows submission date, last graded date, and word count. Its wording is direct about the ID: "The submission ID and date will change for each new submission made to the assignment."

A university guide to Turnitin submission says the same thing in plainer language: on resubmission, "You will receive a different Submission ID—please make a note of it. Your previous attempts will be overwritten."

This is the baseline. A new ID on each successful resubmission is the documented behavior, not an exception.

A same-looking ID is never "the system kept my old number." It is one of two situations, and they have different fixes.

Cause one: you are looking at the old submission. The receipt, the report, or the document viewer can still show the previous submission until you navigate to the new one. If you checked right after resubmitting, what you saw may simply be the old version's ID. The fix is to open the latest submission from the assignment inbox—not from the old receipt—and compare the date.

Cause two: the resubmission did not become a new submission. Turnitin only lets a student overwrite an earlier file when the assignment allows resubmission. The official phrasing: resubmissions are only possible if the instructor selected "immediately (can overwrite reports until due date)" for Similarity Report generation. If the assignment does not allow resubmission, your second upload is rejected or ignored—and the ID you see is the first submission's, because there was never a second one.

The check is about the date, not the ID.

Open the assignment in your course, find your submission, and look at the submission date/time shown next to it. Compare it with the time you clicked "submit."

• The date matches the time you submitted: the new submission exists, and its ID is the new one—you were looking at the old version's ID before.
• The date is still the old one: your new upload did not become a submission. The likely cause is that the assignment does not allow resubmission, or the upload was interrupted. Contact the instructor about the resubmission setting before trying again.

One more official note worth knowing: if you do not need to resubmit at all, deleting the old draft is not the way. Turnitin's help center says plainly that resubmitting to the same assignment automatically overwrites the previous draft—deleting first is unnecessary and the deletion path is a separate, institution-side process.

A successful resubmission always produces a new Submission ID with a new date—that is the documented rule. A same-looking ID means either you were viewing the stale version or your upload never registered as a new submission. Check the date next to your submission, not the ID, and if the date is old, ask about the resubmission setting before trying again.