How to Upload a Document to ChatGPT

OpenAI has been adding several interesting features to ChatGPT, including support for web browsing and plugins. However, there is still no way to upload a document natively and ask questions from its context. Sure, some users can train an AI chatbot on their data, but not everyone has the understanding to set up tools and libraries. So if you are looking for an easy way to upload a document to ChatGPT, this tutorial is going to help you. We have included six different ways to upload PDF, Word, Excel, and other documents to ChatGPT.

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Upload Files to ChatGPT Using Code Interpreter

Thanks to Code Interpreter in ChatGPT, you can now upload files to the chat UI directly. OpenAI has opened access to Code Interpreter for all paying users subscribed to ChatGPT Plus. It’s a phased rollout so users will likely get the beta feature in a week or two. Here is how you can upload files in a variety of formats to ChatGPT, be it audio, video, text, document formats, database files, coding files, etc.

You can follow our detailed article on how to enable and use Code Interpreter in ChatGPT. However, in this tutorial, I am briefly going to demonstrate the steps.

1. Open ChatGPT (visit) and move to “Settings” from the bottom-left corner.

2. Under “Beta features“, enable the toggle for “Code Interpreter”.

3. Now, move to the “GPT-4” model and choose “Code Interpreter” from the drop-down menu.

4. A “+” button will now appear in the text field below. You can click on it to upload files to ChatGPT natively.

5. Here, I have uploaded a PDF file to perform OCR and make it searchable in ChatGPT.

Upload a Document to ChatGPT for Free Using an Extension

We know that OpenAI has not yet added a native functionality to upload documents and files to ChatGPT. However, using a cool ChatGPT Chrome extension, you can upload various types of files to ChatGPT and it works flawlessly. The extension is called ChatGPT File Uploader Extended, and it lets you upload several document formats, including TXT, JS, PY, HTML, CSS, JSON, CSV, MD, TS, TSX, JSX, PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, and ZIP. To learn about it works, follow the steps below.

1. Go ahead and install the ChatGPT File Uploader Extended extension from the link right here. It is completely free to use and works with any Chromium-based browser.

2. Now, simply open the ChatGPT website (visit) and an “Upload” button will appear at the bottom right.

3. Click the button and select the document you wish to upload. Among the popular document formats, it supports PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLSX, TXT, and more.

4. It will now start processing your document automatically.

5. After a while, the AI chatbot will generate a summary of the document.

6. You can now ask questions, and ChatGPT will answer from the uploaded document. How cool is that?

7. I tested Word files, Excel tables, PDF documents, and more, and it processed everything successfully. Keep in mind that it cannot process documents with scanned images, though.

8. You can also click the “Settings” icon next to the “Upload” button and increase the chunk size if you have a large document. Also, you can customize the prompts, ZIP file settings, and more.

Upload a PDF File to ChatGPT Using a Third-party Website

If you want to upload a PDF file to ChatGPT, you can take a look at chatpdf.com (visit). It’s a great service that uses ChatGPT API to process and analyze PDF files. The best part is that you don’t need to add your API key.

For free users, the service allows up to 120 pages per PDF file (10MB or below) and three PDF file uploads in a day. You can ask up to 50 questions per day. If you choose to get the Plus subscription ($5 per month), you can upload up to 2,000 pages per PDF document to this ChatGPT website. Here is how to use it.

1. Head over to chatpdf.com (visit) and click on “Drop PDF here” to upload your PDF document.

2. You can also enter the URL of a PDF file using the “From URL” link at the bottom.

3. It will process the PDF document within a few seconds depending on the file size.

4. First, it will show a summary of the document with three suggested questions. You can also ask your questions below and chat with the PDF file.

Analyze Documents Using ChatGPT-powered Bing AI Sidebar

For those unaware, Microsoft has added a ChatGPT-powered Bing Sidebar (also called Discover) to its Edge browser. It’s one of the best AI tools that allows you to analyze documents without even having to upload the file. Simply open the document in Microsoft Edge, and it will automatically process the file. Here is how it works.

1. Launch Microsoft Edge and open the PDF file by pressing “Ctrl + O”. You can also open the web version of Microsoft Office or Google Docs or even a webpage.

2. Now, click the Bing Sidebar button and start asking questions. You can begin with a summary, and it will give a contextualized answer from the document open in that tab.

3. You can ask further questions, and it will continue answering from the document itself. You can also click on “Answer from this page instead” if it responds from the web.

Analyze PDF or Text Documents Using ChatGPT Plugins

If you are subscribed to ChatGPT Plus, you can now use the latest GPT-4 model and ChatGPT Plugins to upload and study any kind of document. You need to enable ChatGPT Plugins to access the documents. Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. First, open the ChatGPT website (visit) and enable ChatGPT Plugins by following our linked guide.

2. Next, move to the “GPT-4” model. Here, click on the “Plugins” option.

2. Now, open the “Plugin store” using the dropdown menu.

3. Here, move to the “All” section, look for the “AskYourPDF” plugin, and install it. You can also try the Link Reader plugin, which works similarly.

4. Next, enable “AskYourPDF” from the arrow icon once the plugin is installed.

5. Finally, enter the document link into ChatGPT, and you can ask any question you want.

6. If you want to upload your own document, run the below prompt and it will give you a link where you can upload the file.

upload a document

7. Open the link and here, you can upload a variety of document formats, including PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, PPT, PPTX, CSV, EPUB, and RTF.

8. It will now give you a document ID. Copy it. This will allow you to continue chatting with the document in ChatGPT’s interface.

9. Simply paste the document ID and ask your questions. It will automatically identify your uploaded document and let you ask questions from that particular document only.

Upload a Document to ChatGPT Using BookGPT

Finally, there is also a BookGPT project on Hugging Face that lets you upload an entire book. If you have a large document, this project is suitable for you. It uses ChatGPT’s API to process and analyze the document. The only drawback is that you need to add your OpenAI API key. Here is how it works.

1. First, sign in to your OpenAI account from here. If you don’t have an account, create a free account.

2. Then, click on “Create a new secret key” and copy the API key. If you have exhausted your free API credit, you need to add a card to use it.

3. Next, open the BookGPT project and paste the OpenAI API key at the bottom.

4. After that, add the URL of the PDF document or upload a local PDF file to ChatGPT. Now, ask your questions and click on “Submit” here.

5. Within a few seconds, the document will be processed, and you will get an answer with page number citations. Isn’t that cool? You can now continue asking more questions.