can I upload a scanned PDF questionnaire or does it have to be a Word file

Yes, but the quality of the scan determines whether recognition works properly

A scanned PDF works, even if it is actually a photograph of a paper questionnaire without an underlying text layer. The system reads the page with OCR text recognition and converts it into recognizable questions. With a skewed scan, low contrast or poor resolution, recognition can produce errors: a question that is not found, or an answer option that is read incorrectly. A PDF that has already been created digitally — exported from Word or from the portal itself — gives the best results, because the text layer is already in it and nothing needs to be "guessed".

For matching with the supply chain file, the file type no longer matters: once recognized, each question is matched in the same way to an answer from the file, whether it came from a Word document, an online form or a scan. The difference is only in the first step. With a long list containing tables or ticked boxes — such as questions about a professional liability insurance for businesses or about the number of employees — it is worth comparing the recognized question with the original, especially if the scan was not flawless. If you are in doubt about a recognized question: you can always skip it or adjust it manually before confirming.

Why this is not a question of legislation or standards text

This is not a matter of an external standard or regulation, but of how the platform extracts text from a document. None of the sources relevant to this topic — not the Handelsregisterwet, not the VSME standard, not the CSRD directive, not ISO/IEC 27001 and not article 21 of the NIS2 directive — says anything about file formats or scan recognition. Those sources do determine which data is being requested, such as the company's registration number, not how a document is technically processed.