When something goes wrong

The generic one. It usually means the AI returned something unusable, or the request timed out on a long piece of material. It is worth pressing generate a second time before anything else — a repeat failure means something about the input, not the service.

If it fails twice, cut the material down. One chapter beats a whole textbook, and a page of dense notes beats a fifty-page PDF. Asking for fewer questions in one go also helps.

Your PDF has no text layer. Almost always this means it was scanned or photographed — the page is an image of words, so there is nothing to read out of it. A PDF exported from Word or Google Docs has a text layer; one produced by a photocopier usually does not.

Two ways round it:

• Use the Image source instead and upload a photo of the page. That path reads the text off the picture.
• Open the PDF, select the text and paste it into the Text source. If you can't select any text, it is definitely a scan.

Two limits, both checked before anything is read: the file must be a PDF, and it must be under 10 MB. A scanned chapter is often over 10 MB because every page is a photograph — compressing it, or splitting out the pages you actually want, usually brings it well under.

Word files aren't supported directly; save as PDF, or paste the text.

The free plan includes 20 generations in total — not per month. Editing, sharing, exporting, and students taking your quizzes never use one; only generating does, including a reteach set and a failed attempt.

Everything you have already made stays yours and keeps working after the 20 are used. You just can't generate new quizzes without upgrading.

Pages behind a login or a paywall, and pages that build themselves with JavaScript after loading, give up little or no text. The fix is the dull one: open the page, select the part you want and paste it into the Text source. You get better questions that way anyway, because you choose what matters instead of including the navigation and the cookie banner.

Work through these in order — it is nearly always the first one:

• Sharing is off. Open Share and turn on “Anyone with the link can take this quiz”. Until you do, only workspace members can open it — which is why it works for you and not for them.
• Responses are closed, or your closing time has passed. They see “This quiz is no longer accepting responses.”
• There is a password they weren't given, or they have mistyped it too many times and been asked to wait.
• Attempts are used up on that device, if you capped them.
• The link was reset. Resetting makes a new link and stops the old one immediately, so an old copy in your LMS will not work.

Attempts appear when a student finishes. Anyone still part-way through is counted separately as started-but-not-finished, so a class that is mid-quiz looks emptier than it is.

Check the First attempts / All attempts toggle too. “First attempts” is the default and deliberately hides retakes, so a class you let retry will show fewer attempts than you expect until you switch it.

Your own previews never appear in the figures. If you opened the quiz from the share dialog to test it, that attempt is recorded in the students list — delete it there.

The receiving platform decides what it accepts, and each one supports different question types and different maximum lengths. Matching, ordering and short answer don't exist on several game platforms; long questions get trimmed.

If an LMS import fails outright, try Aiken — it is the plainest text format and the most widely accepted. For Canvas, Blackboard and Brightspace, QTI is the one to use.