Two limits, and the second one is the trap
Systems built on Tyler Technologies' Odyssey platform — eFileGA among them — enforce two separate ceilings. No single document may exceed 25 MB, and no envelope, meaning everything submitted in one transaction, may exceed 35 MB.
It is entirely possible to assemble a submission in which every document is comfortably under 25 MB and the transaction still fails, because three documents at 15 MB each total 45 MB. The rejection message does not always make clear which of the two limits was hit.
The same 25 MB and 35 MB defaults appear across a number of Tyler states, so guidance written for one often applies to another — but the figures are set per implementation and should be confirmed for the court you are filing in.
Why a filing gets this large
Twenty-five megabytes is tight for scanned material. Around fifty pages of 300 DPI color scanning will reach it, as will a modest set of photographs taken on a modern phone.
Text-native documents behave completely differently. A brief exported directly to PDF from a word processor stores letterforms and positions rather than an image of each page, and typically occupies well under a megabyte regardless of length.
That difference is why compression results vary so widely. A scanned exhibit may give up 90% of its size with no practical loss of legibility; an already-compact text filing may barely move, because there is very little redundant data in it to remove.
If the file is an exhibit
Lossy compression alters a file. Every byte of the output differs from the input, even where the page looks identical on screen, and that can matter if the document's authenticity is ever contested. ShrinkWrit shows the SHA-256 hash of the file you started with and the file it produced, so the change is documented rather than invisible.
The lossless mode strips metadata and repacks the file without touching a single pixel or sample. It saves less, and on a heavily scanned document it may not reach the limit at all — but when it does, the image data is bit-for-bit what it was. Your original is never modified either way; the output is always a new file.
Common questions
- What is the difference between the document limit and the envelope limit?
- The document limit, 25 MB, applies to each PDF individually. The envelope limit, 35 MB, applies to everything in a single submission added together. Both must be satisfied.
- My documents are each under 25 MB but the filing still failed. Why?
- Most likely the 35 MB envelope ceiling. Three documents of 15 MB each are individually fine and total 45 MB, which the transaction will not accept.
- Do other states use the same numbers?
- 25 MB per document and 35 MB per envelope are common Tyler Odyssey defaults and appear in several states. They are configured per implementation, so confirm the figures for the specific court rather than assuming.
- Is my document uploaded to a server to be compressed?
- No. ShrinkWrit runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is transmitted, which matters when the document is a sealed exhibit or contains medical or financial records.
The 25 MB figure on this page was last checked against the court’s own notice on Jul 2026. Limits change without much announcement — confirm it at the source before you file.