# Getting into your scorecard > From FilmScorecard Help: https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/getting-into-your-scorecard Your scorecard is private. **The button in your results email signs you in with one press**, and the nine-character access code printed under that button is the other way in — the one to type on a phone or another computer. This guide covers the button, the code, staying in, what every refusal means, and how to get a new link when the old one has stopped working — or was never sent. **You do not need to sign in or make an account.** There is no password anywhere in this, and no sign-up form to fill in. (Keeping your festival entries in an account of your own is optional — see [Save to your account](#save-to-your-account).) **One code, two pages.** The same link and code also open your **submission page** — the private page festivals send before and during judging, where you can correct your own tagline, synopsis, credits, links and poster and ask the judges two questions. Everything in this guide applies there too, word for word, and the differences are listed in [The same code opens two pages](#the-same-code-opens-two-pages). ## The button in your email **Every email a festival sends you about your submission has a button**, with the same link printed under it in case your email program does not show the button, and your access code printed under that: | The email | Its button | | --- | --- | | Your results — "Your scorecard from *the festival* is ready" | **See your final score** | | The festival's email about your submission page | **Open your submission page** | | A new link you asked for, or one the festival resent | **View your submission** | | A promo code from the festival | **View your scorecard**, one per film | **Pressing it signs you straight in.** You land already proved, with no code to type — and that browser then stays in exactly as if you had typed the code; see [Staying in](#staying-in). - **Press it as often as you like.** It works every time for as long as it lives, and it never counts as a wrong try against your five an hour — so an email program that checks links before you open them does no harm, and is not counted as you opening the page. - **Forwarding the email forwards the way in.** Anybody who presses your button, or types your code, reads your page as you would — and the festival sees their visit, and anything they do there, as yours; see [What the festival sees of your visits](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-scorecard.md#what-the-festival-sees-of-your-visits). Keep the email to yourself; if it has gone somewhere it should not have, ask for a new link — see [When you need a new code](#when-you-need-a-new-code) — and the old one stops working. - **The address in your browser is the plain address of your page** once you are in. Bookmark it or copy it freely: on its own it opens nothing for anybody else, who meets the code card. **To read on another device** — the email on your laptop, say, and the scorecard on your phone — open the page there and type the access code from the email. See [Entering the code](#entering-the-code). ### Where the button lands - **Your results, and a promo code from the festival** — your submission page, with a tile headed **Your scorecard is in** across the top. Press it, or its **View scorecard** button, to open your scorecard. Any promo code in the email goes with you. - **The festival's email about your submission page** — your submission page, with your press kit at the top. - **A new link you asked for** — the page you asked for it from. - **A results email sent before October 10, 2026** still opens your scorecard directly, as it always did. Your scorecard has a way back: **← Your submission**, in the bar at its top. ### One link and one code at a time **Your submission has one link and one code at a time, shared by every email the festival sends you about it.** That is why a button in an older email goes on working when a newer email arrives. - **Each email the festival sends reuses the link and code you already have**, and keeps them working for 30 days from that email. Your results, a submission-page email, a resend, a promo code: same button, same code. - **They last 90 days at most.** After that, the festival's next email brings a new link and a new code, and the older ones stop working. - **Asking for a new link yourself always makes a new one**, and every older link and code stops working at once — see [When you need a new code](#when-you-need-a-new-code). **Whichever email is newest holds the current code.** A new-link email that replaces your old one says "Any link or code we sent you before no longer works.", and so does a promo-code email that brings new codes; the results email and the submission-page email simply print whatever code is current. If two emails show different codes, use the newer. ### When the button says the link has expired **A link that has run out — or been replaced by a newer one you asked for — still takes you to your page**, the same page a live one would, but to the code card rather than inside (for a results email, the submission page's card), with one line above the code box: > That link has expired. We can email you a new one. Press **Email me a new link**, under the card, and use the newest email. **If you are already signed in on that browser**, an old link simply opens the page — there is nothing to prove. ## The page that asks for the code Opening your scorecard link before you have proved anything shows one card, headed: > **PRIVATE SCORECARD** > > **Confirm it is you** > > A scorecard is only shown to the person who entered the film. Anyone else > with this link sees this page. Under it, a quiet block headed **Scorecard for** naming your film, the category or categories it was entered in, its `SUB-` number and the season — then, if you arrived on a link that has run out, "That link has expired. We can email you a new one." — then the **Access code** box and a button reading **Continue to scorecard**. When you are signed in to an account the submission is not saved to, a second button, **Save to your account**, sits under it; see [Save to your account](#save-to-your-account). A second card, under the first, says how long codes last and carries **Email me a new link**. (Before the festival has released your scorecard, the same link shows a **Not available yet** page instead — the same card and the same block naming your film, with one sentence in place of the code box. See [When the link shows "Not available yet"](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-scorecard.md#when-the-link-shows-not-available-yet).) **That is everything a link holder can see.** No score, no rank, no notes, no judges, nothing about whether the submission was selected — and nothing about whether it has been unlocked. Forwarding your link to somebody gives them this page and nothing behind it. **Two kinds of account get in without the code.** - **The festival's own staff.** Somebody signed in to the festival that is judging your film — the same people who read your scores on their own screens while judging runs — can open this page on their account without a code. They see it exactly as you do: still locked if you have not unlocked it, with no way to buy it, share it or change anything, and their visit never uses up one of your tries, replaces your code or tells you anything. **Your code is never shown to them either** — if you lose it, they send you a new one rather than reading you the old one. - **You, once the submission is saved to your FilmScorecard account.** Signed in to that account, the page opens straight away, as yours, and everything on it works as it does with the code. A submission gets there by itself when the festival has the address your account logs in with, or with **Keep it** or **Save to your account** — see [Save to your account](#save-to-your-account). **Showing somebody your result is a different act with a tool of its own.** The **Share** button on the scorecard itself builds a card — an image, or a separate public link — that carries what you choose and never opens this page. See [Sharing your scorecard](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/sharing-your-scorecard.md). The categories named there are **every category your submission was entered in**, which can be more than the scorecard behind it shows: a category no judge has been approved on yet has no section on your scorecard. ## Entering the code 1. Type or paste the nine characters printed under **Your access code** in your results email — or the code from any other email the festival has sent you about this submission; it is the same one. 2. Press **Continue to scorecard**, or the Enter key. The box takes care of some of it for you: - **Lower case is turned into capitals as you type.** - **A stray space at either end of a paste is ignored.** A space in the middle is not — the box only holds nine characters, so a code pasted with a gap in it arrives short and is refused. - **It stops at nine characters**, so a duplicated paste cannot run past the end. - **Codes never contain the letters I, L, O or U, or the digits 0 or 1**, which are the characters people misread. If your code looks like it has one of those, it is the character it resembles. When the code is right the same page re-renders as your scorecard. There is no separate "you are in" screen and the address in your browser does not change. Under the box sits a line saying where the code was sent — "In the results email sent to **c••••@example.test** on **11 Aug 2026**." The dots are always four, whatever the address behind them is, so they say nothing about its length. **If no code has ever been sent** — the festival released your scorecard and handed you the link rather than emailing a code, or their message has not gone out yet — the line reads instead: "No code has been sent yet. Ask for one below and it goes to **c••••@example.test**." **Email me a new link**, under the box, is how you get one; see [When you need a new code](#when-you-need-a-new-code). **If that masked address is not yours**, the festival has a different address on record for your submission. Only they can change it — reply to whoever told you the results were coming. ### What you land on **The page behind the code shows what your submission has earned so far.** Every figure on it counts the scorecards a festival coordinator has approved by the moment you open it: each judge on your panel earns a share of the creative part, and the technical and press-kit reviews earn theirs when they are approved. So a scorecard opened before every judge has filed shows **a lower number than the film will finish on, and it rises on its own** as the rest are approved — same link, same code, later. Your season rank is ordered on the same figure. See [If your scorecard arrived early](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-scorecard.md#if-your-scorecard-arrived-early). ## Save to your account **Nothing you need depends on an account**: the button in your email and your access code open both pages without one. Keeping the submission in an account of your own is what lets the pages open with no code at all. - **Signed in to an account the submission is not saved to**, the code card has a second button, **Save to your account**, under **Continue**. It checks the code exactly as **Continue** does — a wrong one counts as one of your five tries, and a lockout greys out both buttons — and then saves the submission to your account and opens the page as yours, or takes you to the welcome screen the first time; see [Your first project](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-first-project.md). Once you are in, the same button sits in the bar at the top of the page. - **Signed out**, the code card has no second button. Once you are in, your scorecard offers to keep it with a bar at the bottom: **Keep it** emails a code to the masked address under the box, and entering it creates a free account on that address or logs you in to it. **Not now** hides the bar until you close your browser. Every step, every refusal and which project the submission joins are in [Saving a submission to your account](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/saving-a-submission-to-your-account.md). ## The same code opens two pages Festivals also send a second private link, before and during judging: your **submission page**, where you can fix the details of your own entry before the judges read it. It is at a different address, it arrives in a different email, and it is guarded by **the same code box, the same code and the same limits** as this one. [Your submission page](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-submission-page.md) covers what is on it. What is identical: - **One link and one code per submission at a time**, whichever email carried them, and they work on either page. See [One link and one code at a time](#one-link-and-one-code-at-a-time). - **One five-per-hour limit and one fifteen-minute lockout**, kept against your submission rather than against a page. A wrong try counts wherever you typed it. - **One 60-second wait** on **Email me a new link**. - **Asking for a new link from either page replaces the old one**, and asks every browser already signed in — on either page — for the new code. What differs: - **The wording.** The submission page's card is headed **Private submission page**, its button reads **Continue to your submission**, and its messages say "your email" rather than "your results email", because the message carrying that code went out before there were any results. - **When each page exists.** Your submission page comes first, and it stays once results are released: from then on you can open both, and each links to the other — **Your scorecard is in** on the submission page, **← Your submission** on the scorecard. Editing on the submission page stops at the festival's selection date; the page itself stays open unless the festival withdraws or disqualifies your film. **Once you are in on one, the other opens in the same browser without the code.** - **Which page an email opens.** Your results email, a promo-code email and the festival's submission-page email open your submission page — see [Where the button lands](#where-the-button-lands) — and your receipt's **Read your scorecard** opens your scorecard. **The code printed in the festival's emails is the same**, so the code from a submission-page email you had during judging opens your scorecard too — as long as it is still current. **One consequence worth knowing.** Wrong tries are remembered for an hour against your submission, not against a page — so four wrong tries on your submission page shortly before results are released leaves you one attempt on your scorecard. Waiting an hour, or asking for a new link, clears it. ## Staying in Once a code has been accepted — or you have pressed the button in an email — **that browser stays in for 30 days**, and the 30 days start again every time you open the page. Nothing shows you this and there is nothing to switch off. - **It is per browser, per device.** Your phone and your laptop each need the button or the code once. A private or incognito window counts as a new one and forgets everything when you close it. - **There is no "sign out".** Clearing your browser's cookies for the site clears it, and so does asking for a new link (below). **A festival's email does not**: it reuses the link and code you have, so every browser you are in stays in — unless your link has reached its 90 days, when the festival's next email brings a new one. - **A browser you are already in keeps working after the code expires.** Expiry governs typing a code in; it does not shut a device that already got in. **A submission saved to your account is different**: signed in to that account, you need no code at all, on any device. ### Paying does not change any of this Unlocking your scorecard — see [Paying for your scorecard](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-for-your-scorecard.md) — has nothing to do with the code: - **No new code is issued when you pay**, and the one you have keeps working exactly as it did. - **The receipt email carries no access code.** It is a receipt: the festival, the amount, an `SC-` number and a link back to your scorecard. If you need a code, ask for one from the code page, not from that message. - **Asking for a new link after you have paid is safe.** It replaces the link and the code, as it always does, and your unlock is untouched — the unlock belongs to the submission, not to a code or a browser. - **The unlock covers every device.** Enter your code on a second device and the scorecard is unlocked there too, with nothing more to pay. ## When you need a new code **Your link and code run out 30 days after the latest email the festival sent you about this submission**, and never more than 90 days after they were first made — see [One link and one code at a time](#one-link-and-one-code-at-a-time). The card under the box puts it shortly: > Codes expire 30 days after the latest email, at most 90 days after they were first sent. Asking for a new link replaces your code. (The submission page's card reads the same.) **Press Email me a new link** and a line appears above the button: > New link queued. It can take a few minutes to arrive. **3:42 PM** - **"Queued", not "sent".** The message leaves from FilmScorecard's background sending, usually within a couple of minutes. The timestamp is when you asked. - **The button then counts down 60 seconds** — "Email me a new link (43s)" — and there is no way to ask faster than once a minute. - **It goes to the address the festival has for your submission**, and nowhere else. It is a short email of its own: the subject is "Your new link for *your film*", headed **Your new link**, with a **View your submission** button that signs you in to the page you asked from, the same link printed under it, and **Access code** with the new nine characters and "It expires in 30 days. Any link or code we sent you before no longer works." It says nothing about what the scorecard holds or costs — if you have already paid, the page shows what you own. Two consequences worth knowing before you press it: - **Every older link and code stops working the moment the new one is sent** — the buttons in the festival's earlier emails included. Only one link and one code are ever live for a submission. - **Every device that got in with the old ones is asked for the code again.** If you are reading on a laptop and ask for a new link on your phone, the laptop will want the new code next time. **A new link does not take a saved submission out of your account.** Once it is saved there, it stays, whatever happens to the link. **Reloading the page clears the countdown, but not the limit.** If you reload and press again inside that minute, the same "New link queued" line appears and **no second email is sent** — the limit is kept by FilmScorecard, not by the button. Wait a minute and press once if the first one really did not arrive. **A festival can also resend your link** — from its own screens — as a "Your link for *your film*" email. That one reuses the link and code you have, says the festival sent it, and stops nothing working. ## Too many wrong tries **Five wrong codes in an hour locks the box for 15 minutes.** The box greys out, cannot be typed in, and the line under it becomes the wait: > Too many attempts. Try again in **14 minutes**. The wait counts itself down on screen; you do not need to reload. - **"Email me a new link" keeps working through the lockout**, deliberately — being locked out is exactly when a fresh way in is the thing you need. - **A correct code is still refused while the lockout runs.** Wait it out, or ask for a new link and press its button. - **The button in a current email still works during a lockout**, and pressing it never counts as a wrong try. - **The hour is a rolling one.** A wrong try more than an hour after your last one starts the counting again from one. - Getting the code right clears the count. **The festival's staff are not affected by any of this**, and neither are you by them: their own way in does not touch the count, the lockout or your code. ## Every message the code box can show | The message | What it means | | --- | --- | | Enter the access code from your results email. | The box was empty. On the submission page: "Enter the access code from your email." | | That code does not match this submission. Check the code in your results email. **3 attempts left.** | The code was wrong, **or** it has expired, **or** it belongs to a different submission. FilmScorecard does not say which — see below. What you typed stays in the box so you can fix one character. On the submission page the sentence ends "…in your email." | | The same sentence **without** the attempts line | What you typed was not nine letters and digits, so the box refused it before asking FilmScorecard. It costs you no attempt. | | Too many attempts. Try again in **14 minutes**. | Five wrong tries inside an hour. The box is disabled until the wait runs out. | | The code could not be checked just now. Nothing has changed. Try again in a moment. | Something went wrong between your browser and FilmScorecard. Your attempt was not counted against the five. | | This scorecard cannot be opened right now. Nothing is wrong with your code — try again later, or contact the festival. | Something is misconfigured at the festival's end, and no code can open the page at all until they fix it. It is not your code and no attempt was counted. The submission page says "This page cannot be opened right now" instead. | | That link has expired. We can email you a new one. | You arrived from an email's button whose link has run out, or been replaced by a newer one. Use **Email me a new link**, or type the code from your newest email. | | New link queued. It can take a few minutes to arrive. | A new link has been asked for. It is not a delivery confirmation. | | A new link could not be requested just now. Try again in a moment. | The request itself failed. Nothing was sent; press it again. | **Wrong, expired and somebody else's code all give the same sentence, on purpose.** Telling a stranger with a guessed link that their code was "valid but for another submission" would tell them something real about somebody else's film. The cost is that you have to check your own email rather than be told which of the three it was. ## When there is no email at all Four situations look alike from your side and are not: **The festival has released, but your message has not landed yet.** Page access opens the moment a festival releases — on the season's date, or when they release your submission on its own — and the emails leave from FilmScorecard's background sending shortly afterwards. If somebody has told you the results are out and you have your link, open it and press **Email me a new link** — that works whether or not the first message ever reached you. **The festival gave you the link and never sent a code.** A festival can release one submission's scorecard and hand over the link by other means — a message, a call — instead of emailing. The code page says so under the box: "No code has been sent yet. Ask for one below and it goes to …". Press **Email me a new link**; the link and code go to the address on your submission and nowhere else. **The same is true of a submission page** — a coordinator can copy that address out of their own screen and send it to you without any email leaving FilmScorecard, and the page will send you a link and a code when you ask for one. **The link shows "Not available yet".** Then there is nothing to ask for yet: the festival has not released your scorecard, or nothing on your submission has been approved, and the page does not say which. It changes by itself when that changes — see [When the link shows "Not available yet"](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-scorecard.md#when-the-link-shows-not-available-yet). **The link answers "page not found".** The link itself is wrong — mistyped, cut in half by a mail program, or not for a submission that exists. Check you copied the whole of it, then ask the festival. **No email is ever sent for a submission with no approved scorecard**, and its page stays at "Not available yet" until that changes. If your festival released results and you got nothing, that is one of the things worth asking them about. ## Related guides - [Your scorecard](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-scorecard.md) — the page itself: what is on it before and after you unlock it, your season rank, and the PDF. - [Your submission page](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-submission-page.md) — the other page this code opens: correcting your own details before and during judging, and asking the judges your own two questions. - [Paying for your scorecard](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-for-your-scorecard.md) — the price, the trip to Stripe and back, and the receipt email. - [Sharing your scorecard](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/sharing-your-scorecard.md) — the Share button on the scorecard: the card it builds and the public link, neither of which ever opens the code page. - [Saving a submission to your account](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/saving-a-submission-to-your-account.md) — how a submission reaches an account of yours: by itself, with **Keep it** or with **Save to your account**.