Skip to content

Getting your reading list into ChatGPT

Lecture notes, textbook chapters and past papers are usually too long to upload. Here is how to work with them anyway.

The situation

A textbook chapter runs to tens of thousands of words. ChatGPT takes the file, reads the first part, and gives you a summary of chapter one when you asked about chapter nine.

What people use it for

  • Turn a long chapter into questions you can test yourself against
  • Get an explanation of a concept in the words your course actually uses
  • Compare your lecture notes against the set reading to find what you missed
  • Work through a past paper with the marking scheme alongside it

Worth knowing first

It will not read a photograph of a page. Scanned handouts and phone pictures of a whiteboard contain no text to extract, so run them through OCR first or type out the part you need.

Related guides