"Compress your files" is the standard advice for ImmiAccount's 5 MB limit — and then applicants zip their documents and get rejected anyway. The confusion is understandable: "compressed file" describes two completely different things, and ImmiAccount accepts one and rejects the other.
A compressed PDF is still a PDF
PDF compression works inside the document: it re-encodes the images in your scan more efficiently, so the file shrinks — often from 12 MB to under 2 MB — while remaining an ordinary .pdf that opens in any viewer. Nothing about the file's type changes. This is what "compress your documents" means in every visa context, and it's exactly what ImmiAccount needs you to do with oversize scans.
A ZIP is a container, not a document
A ZIP (or RAR, or 7z) wraps one or more files inside an archive that must be extracted before anything can be read. To ImmiAccount, an archive isn't a document at all — a case officer can't open it directly, the system can't preview or virus-check its contents the same way, and the upload is rejected. The same goes for zipping a single file: a 4 MB ZIP containing one 6 MB PDF doesn't satisfy the limit, because the thing you uploaded isn't a PDF.
Why this trips so many people up
- The word "compressed" genuinely covers both — operating systems even label zipping as "Compress" in the right-click menu.
- Email habits transfer badly: bundling attachments into one ZIP is normal etiquette elsewhere, and exactly wrong here.
- The 5 MB limit invites it: when three related scans are each 3 MB, zipping them into one 4 MB archive looks like a clever fix.
What to do instead
Two operations replace every legitimate use of a ZIP. If one document spans several files — pages of a lease scanned separately, both sides of an ID card — merge them into a single PDF, one document per file. If a file is over 5 MB, compress the PDF itself. Never wrap either result in an archive.
Our guide to compressing PDFs for a visa application covers the size side in detail, and a VisaPacks checklist has both tools built in — merge related scans into one PDF, compress anything oversize, and export the finished set as individual, correctly named files ready to upload one by one.
Quick self-check before uploading: look at the file extension. If it ends in .pdf, .jpg or .png, ImmiAccount can take it. If it ends in .zip, .rar or .7z, extract it and upload the contents individually.
What about a ZIP export from a checklist tool?
Some preparation tools — VisaPacks included — export your finished document set as a ZIP bundle. That ZIP is for you, not for ImmiAccount: it's a convenient way to move the complete, correctly named set onto the computer you'll lodge from, or to keep as your own record of exactly what you submitted. When you reach the upload step, extract the archive first and attach the individual PDFs inside it one by one, each against its matching category. The value of the export is in what's inside — files already compressed under 5 MB, merged per document, and named consistently — not the wrapper itself.
FAQ
Can I upload a ZIP file to ImmiAccount?
No. ZIP and other archive formats are rejected. Upload each document as its own PDF, JPG or PNG file.
Is a compressed PDF acceptable in ImmiAccount?
Yes — PDF compression only shrinks the file's internal images; the result is still a normal PDF and uploads like any other. It's the recommended fix for files over the 5 MB limit.
I have ten documents — do I really upload them one at a time?
Yes, one file per document, each against the matching category. Preparing the set in advance with consistent names makes this fast; bundling them into an archive to save clicks just gets the upload rejected.