Most Docutrain problems fall into a handful of shapes, and most have a cause the on-screen message is already telling you about. This is a triage guide to the ones people hit most: what is happening underneath, and the shortest route out.
Sign-in and accounts
"Invalid email or password." Check the address you registered with and use the eye icon to confirm what you typed. If that does not do it, use Forgot password?, or skip passwords entirely: the Email code tab signs you in with a 6-digit code sent to your inbox.
"Please check your email to confirm your account." Your address is not verified yet. Find the confirmation email (check spam), open it, and press Verify Email Address on the Confirm Your Email page — verification never happens automatically. If the link has expired, sign up again with the same address to get a fresh one. Several requests in quick succession trigger a notice that the sending limit was exceeded.
"Your account is pending approval." Your account exists but an administrator has not approved it. Your profile's Status reads Pending Approval, the Start page shows which group your request is with, and you are emailed once approved. If it drags on, contact that group's administrator (roles and invitations).
Opening a document
You get sent to the Start page with a message instead of the document. This is the catch-all: the document does not exist at that address, you do not have permission, or it is offline. The message says which. Check for typos, sign in, or ask the owner for access. If it says the document is offline, the owner has turned off the Active document setting and there is nothing to fix on your side.
"Incorrect passcode. Please try again." Passcodes are set by the owner and can be changed, so if careful re-entry still fails, ask whoever shared the document for the current one. Collections can carry a passcode too, unlocking every document in the collection at once.
"Access Token Required." Some documents open only through a share link carrying a token; there is nothing to type on this screen. Use the exact link you were given, and if it no longer works or reports Invalid or expired token, ask for a fresh one (access levels explained).
Uploads and processing
The file is rejected as an invalid type. Only PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Markdown, and audio (MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG, FLAC, AAC) are accepted; re-export from whatever tool produced the file.
"Exceeds the maximum size allowed for training." Split the document into smaller parts, upload the first to train it, then add each remaining part through Retrain with Add to existing data. Very long PDFs can hit a page limit too, and the same approach applies — large documents sometimes need three or more parts (retraining and history).
A document stuck in Processing. First check whether it really has stalled. The card shows the stage a run has reached even while the badge reads Queued or Pending, and some stages take a while: reading a scanned PDF, or the extra pass on documents full of diagrams.
If there is genuinely no progress for more than five minutes, the badge changes to Stuck and a Force Retry button appears. Use it, or wait — Docutrain sweeps for interrupted runs every fifteen minutes and either resumes or releases them. If it sticks again, check whether the file is password-protected, whether it is very large or scanned, and whether it opens correctly in its own application; a corrupted file cannot be processed.
Processing finished but the assistant knows nothing. The file probably has no extractable text — typically a scanned PDF that is only images of text. If you cannot select text in the original, you need a version with real text, then a retrain.
Chat and answers
"Not in this document." The reply reads: "I couldn't find that in my training. I only answer based on what's in these materials — I won't guess beyond that." That is the design working, not a failure. Rephrase using words that appear in the document, check the keyword cloud for what it covers, and confirm processing has finished. When the document belongs to a collection, the reply also points you at Chat with all docs in the collection, and may show an Elsewhere panel whose Ask there re-asks the question in a suggested document. On a document you manage, raising Chunk limit override increases retrieval depth.
The answer stopped mid-sentence, or "Failed to get response." A network interruption can cut off a streaming answer; check your connection and re-send. An outage at the AI service is no longer a reason to retry — another takes over, and the reply may arrive all at once rather than word by word. That is the hand-over, and the answer is unaffected. When the assistant says it is "still thinking", a first attempt did not find a good answer and it is trying again.
You are told to slow down, or that the daily limit is reached. Chat has a burst limit and a per-minute limit; the message says how many seconds to wait. An amber banner reading "This assistant has reached its daily question limit" is different: the publishing organization's allowance, shared across its readers, is used up. It is a rolling 24-hour window, so when the banner shows a time, try again then.
Missing citations, or answers in an unexpected language. The Citations and References settings are the owner's to control, and very general questions may produce answers without specific references. Many documents also instruct the assistant to answer in the language of their content, so a French document gives French answers (document settings tour).
The Quiz button is missing. Two things must be true: the owner has generated a question bank, and the Quiz toggle is on in UI Options. Generating a bank requires the Pro plan or higher. Downloads and galleries work the same way, and galleries need actual content before the tool appears (quizzes).
Integrations, plans, and getting help
The Telegram bot does not respond. Telegram is enabled per document by its owner. Open the document's chat in a browser and use the Telegram tool to get the correct bot link; an old or wrong link is the most common cause. If the tool is missing, Telegram is not enabled there.
An embedded widget does not load, or shows a message instead of chat. Open the document directly in a browser first: if the direct link shows a message (offline, access denied, a passcode prompt), the embed shows the same state and the owner has to fix it. If the direct link works and the embed does not, look at the embed: one still a Draft, switched off, or deleted renders nothing at all, showing empty space rather than an error. Publish or reactivate it in the Embeds tab (embedding on your website).
Plan messages. "Document Limit Reached" means you have trained as many documents as your plan allows; delete some or use Upgrade Plan. Documents "archived by plan limit" are paused, not deleted — that happens when your limit drops below your document count, and upgrading restores the most recently archived ones. A feature not on your plan is named in the message, with View Plans; downgrading is blocked while you have more documents than the target plan allows (plans and limits).
If none of this helps, the Contact link in the top navigation opens a form that pre-fills your details when you are signed in and replies by email. Owner admins have Support under Account in the dashboard's side navigation for tickets about an account, documents, or billing, and copyright takedown requests have their own form linked from page footers. Whatever route you take, include the document's name or address, what you were doing, and the exact message you saw.