3 methods to load PDFs into ChatGPT! You can also create summaries in an instant [Today's Work Hack].

ChatGPT is good at generating text, but not so good at handling file formats such as PDF. However, it does not mean that there is no way.
If you want ChatGPT to read PDFs, you can try the following three methods.

1. type a URL into ChatGPT

ChatGPT can refer to the URL you enter. This means that if you have a PDF file online, it is very easy to make ChatGPT refer to the PDF file.
I won't go into detail here, but all you need is the web address of the PDF you want to reference. For example, in this case, we asked ChatGPT to summarize Article 1, Sections 1-4 from the United States Government website.
ChatGPT will then neatly summarize the main points of the requested page. There is one point to note here.
There is one thing to note here: ChatGPT's prompts and responses are limited, especially for complex requests.
So for large documents, you will need to break the task into smaller pieces. 2.

1. copying text from a PDF

If you have a copy of the PDF on your computer, the easiest way is to simply copy the text you need from the PDF.
After opening the PDF using Microsoft Edge, highlight the relevant text and copy it to the clipboard.
I asked ChatGPT to itemize the main points of the text and it outputs what I wanted.
As you can see, ChatGPT responds easily if you paste the text; try not to ask too much in one request. This technique works with most applications that can open PDFs.

1. convert PDF to a text document

However, although PDFs contain text, they are not easy to edit. So, let's convert PDF to a more manageable format.
There are many ways to do this, such as using Google Drive to convert Word documents. There are also many online PDF editors, many of which can convert PDF to text.
But if you have Microsoft Word installed, just open the file and save it as a text document or a Word document. Here we will use the same article we used in Heading 2. The following procedure is done in Word.

How to replace a PDF with text in Word

1. open Word and use the Open command to browse to the folder where the document is stored.
2. if the document does not appear, select PDF File from the options in the File Type drop-down box.
3. when the file opens, you will be asked if you want to convert the document, press OK to proceed.
4. once the file is converted to Word and opened, use the "Save As" command to save the file as a Word document or text document of your choice.

After the conversion is complete, copy the text directly into ChatGPT and run the prompt and you are done.