Is Rahvusarhiiv Down? Live status & outage reports

Service info and troubleshooting

Rahvusarhiiv Website Won't Load at All

Try clearing your browser cache first — old cached data frequently causes blank pages or loading loops on archive portals. If the site still doesn't respond, switch to a different browser entirely. Chrome, Firefox, and Edge handle the archive's document viewer differently, and what breaks in one often works fine in another. Also check whether your DNS is resolving correctly by trying a different network, such as mobile data instead of home Wi-Fi.

Search Returns No Results or Wrong Ones

The archive search is sensitive to character encoding, especially with Estonian special characters like õ, ä, ö, and ü. If you're copying search terms from another document, invisible formatting characters can tag along and break the query. Type the search terms manually rather than pasting them. Also try broadening the date range or switching between the basic and advanced search modes — some collections are only indexed under specific filters.

Scanned Documents Fail to Display

• Make sure your browser allows JavaScript from the archive domain, since the document viewer depends on it heavily
• Disable browser extensions one by one, especially ad blockers and script managers — they routinely interfere with embedded viewers
• If a specific page won't render, try downloading the file directly instead of using the inline viewer
• On slow connections, high-resolution scans time out before fully loading; switching to a lower quality preview option usually helps

Login to Personal Account Fails

Session cookies cause most login problems here. Log out completely, clear cookies for the rahvusarhiiv.ee domain specifically, then log back in. If you get an authentication error after submitting credentials, check that your system clock is accurate — token-based login systems reject requests when the client time is off by more than a few minutes.

Uploaded Files or Orders Not Going Through

When submitting document requests or uploading files through the portal, file size and format restrictions apply. PDFs above a certain size and non-standard image formats tend to fail silently without an error message. Compress images before uploading and stick to common formats like JPEG or standard PDF. If the submission form freezes mid-upload, the session may have expired — refresh the page, log in again, and repeat the upload without leaving the tab idle for too long.

Page Interface Freezes Mid-Navigation

This usually points to a JavaScript conflict or insufficient browser memory when multiple archive tabs are open simultaneously. Close unrelated tabs, reload the page with a hard refresh, and avoid opening many document previews at once. If freezing happens consistently on the same page, report it through the contact form with your browser version included.