Many people, you included, are starting to wonder how to upload a document to ChatGPT. What started as a novelty chatbot for a quick conversation, is now becoming our personal assistant. And when you start to see it as your right hand man, you begin to think of more and more ways it can be useful to you – like summarizing a lengthy document, or answering your questions with the content of a particular text file.
Contents
- 1 Can You Upload A Document To ChatGPT?
- 2 How To Upload A Document To ChatGPT – Free Version
- 3 Something Very Important To Know Before Uploading Documents To ChatGPT:
- 4 How To Upload A Document To ChatGPT – Paid Version
- 4.1 ChatGPT Plus Upload a Document Using A Third-Party Plugin
- 4.2 Step 1. Open a chat window with GPT-4.
- 4.3 Step 2. Install the plugins and choose them for the chat
- 4.4 Step 3. Give a link to your PDF to ChatGPT
- 4.5 Step 4. Request that the plugin summarize the info
- 4.6 Upload A Document To ChatGPT Plus Through Code Interpreter
- 5 How To Upload A Document To ChatGPT – A Workaround with Bing
- 6 How To Upload A Document To ChatGPT – Use The API
- 7 Summary – How Do I Prefer To Upload Documents To ChatGPT
Can You Upload A Document To ChatGPT?
The short answer is – no. You cannot directly upload documents into ChatGPT. However, there are ways you can go around this and I will share the options with you. There are 3 scenarios for each reader here – you are either using GPT 3.5 (the free ChatGPT), you are using ChatGPT Plus (paid ChatGPT) or you are using the ChatGPT API.
This will be a comprehensive guide on how to upload a document to ChatGPT, so we will cover them all.
How To Upload A Document To ChatGPT – Free Version
Method 1: Copy and paste your text manually:
If your text is not big, just write a prompt like this:
In the next few messages I am going to paste the content of a file here. I would like you to only reply with ‘continue’ until I write: ‘I am done pasting the file’. After that, all my questions will be regarding the information I pasted into the chatbox.
This is the simplest and safest method, as you are not sharing any of your information with third parties. If you want to ensure that your data is not saved and used by ChatGPT as training as well, please check this article I wrote recently about how ChatGPT processes your data: Does ChatGPT Save Data
Method 2: Upload with a Chrome extension.
This is the simplest and quickest method if you are going to be needing to upload documents regularly. Currently there seem to be 3 extensions that allow you to do this, but at the time of your reading there may be more. Here’s a link to the Chrome Store where you can search available options: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/chatgpt%20upload
Here you can see the process for an extension called: ChatGPT File Uploader Extended

You just click on the upload file button and that’s it.
How do these ChatGPT Upload Extensions Work?
They basically take the text of your file, and paste it multiple times to ChatGPT. They prompt the Chatbot to just reply with ‘Continue’ or something similar until it is done pasting the information.
You can see the initial prompt here:

This is basically an automated version of what you did manually in the first step.
Something Very Important To Know Before Uploading Documents To ChatGPT:
Please note that ChatGPT has a context window – this means that it will not remember your conversation beyond 3000 words in the free version and 6000 words in the paid ChatGPT 4 version. Having this in mind, it’s most likely not a good idea to rely on its answers for very big documents with the above 2 methods.
How To Upload A Document To ChatGPT – Paid Version
This section will cover how to upload documents to ChatGPT 4, the premium version of ChatGPT. Please note that you can still use the previous 2 methods with the paid version, but it allows you to take advantage of a method that is not available to free users – using ChatGPT Plugins. Currently, there are two plugins that seem to be able to read documents: ChatWithPDF and AskYourPDF. You can also use the Code Interpreter version of ChatGPT Plus to upload text files and analyze their content.
ChatGPT Plus Upload a Document Using A Third-Party Plugin
Step 1. Open a chat window with GPT-4.

Choose that you want to use plugins, as shown above.
Step 2. Install the plugins and choose them for the chat

Click on the plugin icon below the Chatbot choice, and then go the plugin store if you do not already have the plugins installed. Install them and come back to the plugin choice screen, and choose the plugin you wish to use, as can be seen above.
Step 3. Give a link to your PDF to ChatGPT
Upload your pdf to Google Drive / DropBox / Onedrive or some third party service that allows file sharing. Get the link and give it to ChatGPT. Here’s a guide for Google Drive and how to get the sharing link: https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/13004062?hl=en
Step 4. Request that the plugin summarize the info

You can ask it whatever question you need regarding the document, like seen above.
Upload A Document To ChatGPT Plus Through Code Interpreter
Code interpreter is a functionality that was recently made available to plus members, and it allows you to share files directly with the chatbot so it can work with them. As the name suggests, it is mainly used for coding help, however, you can also upload vanilla documents to it and ask ChatGPT to analyze them. Note – you cannot upload PDFs, you would need to first convert it to a TXT file.
Step 1: Choose the code interpreter function:

Step 2: Upload a txt file by choosing the plus sign on the left of the chatbox:

Step 3: Profit! Now you can ask ChatGPT plus questions regarding your file!
How To Upload A Document To ChatGPT – A Workaround with Bing
You can use the below step by step instructions to read a document using Bing Chat. It uses ChatGPT 4 and it is totally free, you just need to have the edge browser.
- Open your PDF with the Microsoft Edge. This is done by right clicking your pdf file, click on ‘Open with’ -> Open with Microsoft Edge:
- Click on the bing icon on the top right. Then click on the 3 dots on the discover sidebar that pops up. Here we will allow bing chat to read your document, otherwise the next steps will not work.
- Make sure that page context is toggled on, as you can see in the below screenshot:
- Now you can ask it to summarize your PDF or any questions you have regarding the contents:
How To Upload A Document To ChatGPT – Use The API
This part is for the developers out there or those of you who are a bit more adventurous and would like to directly converse with the ChatGPT AI through your own interface. There was a tool that you could use by providing your API key in this link: ttps://huggingface.co/spaces/pritish/BookGPT
Sadly, it seems like it hasn’t worked for some time. Because of that I have created a guide on using the API here: How To Upload A Document To ChatGPT Using The OpenAI API
The guide is for reading documents using the OPENAI API for complete beginners, so even if you have never coded before, you can still follow it.
Summary – How Do I Prefer To Upload Documents To ChatGPT
As you saw, there are many methods for uploading a document to ChatGPT and getting the information. My personal preferred methods are:
- If the document is small, I will just copy and paste it.
- If it is a big document, I will use Bing chat, as it has a very easy implementation
- If the document is big and also has sensitive information, I prefer using the ChatGPT API to upload my files.
I hope this article was helpful! Make sure to comment and let me know if you need any help or clarification!
Updated on 10.07.2023 to add the Code Interpreter file upload steps.
Updated on 11.07.2023 to add the guide for using the OpenAI Api to upload documents.