Summarizing and synthesizing a document you provide

This lesson is still being tested: it improves with learners' feedback. If something is unclear, it is the lesson that needs fixing, not you.

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to

give a document to the AI, by uploading it or by pasting its text;
ask for a targeted summary: for whom, how long, which question;
have it flag what is missing and what contradicts itself;
check a summary by finding the passages in the original.

Why it matters to you

Rules, a rental contract, a user manual, a 20-page report: the AI can tell you in a minute what concerns you. But a summary is always a choice. It can leave out the point that matters to you, or smooth over a contradiction. This lesson teaches you to get a useful summary, and to check it in two minutes.

Before you start


You need	Your assistant, free account, and the fictional document from the resource
Cost	€0 (on ChatGPT, the free plan limits uploads to 3 files per day; Claude’s help does not state a limit specific to the free plan; for a fairly short text, you can paste it, otherwise work in parts)
Duration	40 minutes
Reminder	An uploaded file goes to the company’s servers: nothing confidential without permission

Understand it in 3 minutes

Two ways to give a document:

	Paste the text	Upload the file
How	Copy the text, paste it into the message box	The + button in the message box, or drag the file into the conversation
When	Short or medium text, or when uploading is not possible	Long document, PDF, spreadsheet
Limits	The length the assistant can read at once	See below

What the official help pages say (read on 24/10/2026):

Claude accepts, among others, PDF, DOCX, TXT, CSV and RTF files, up to 20 files per conversation; a PDF is limited to 1,000 pages. For a PDF of 100 pages or fewer, Claude also reads images and charts; beyond that, only the text.
ChatGPT accepts, among others, DOCX, PDF and TXT files, spreadsheets (XLSX, CSV) and presentations (PPTX), including on the free plan, but with at most 3 files per day on the free plan.

A useful summary answers a question. “Summarize this document” gives a summary for everyone. “I’m renting this hall for a birthday: summarize what I need to know about the price, the deposit and the hours” gives a summary for you.

Three requests make a summary checkable:

“For each point, quote the exact passage (or the article number).”
“What does this document not say, that I should ask about?”
“Are there passages that contradict each other?”

Do it together

The document in the example is fictional: the rental terms of a neighborhood hall.

1Step 1: Give the document

Open the resource Rental terms for the Tilleuls Hall, copy all of its text, and paste it into a new conversation with:

Here are the rental terms of a hall (fictional document). Read them, then wait for my question.

2Step 2: A targeted summary, with the passages

I'm renting this hall on a Saturday for a birthday party of 40 people. Summarize in 8 lines at most what I need to know: the price, the deposit, the hours and the prohibitions. For each point, give the article number.

3Step 3: What is missing, what contradicts itself

What does this document not say, that I should ask about before signing? Are there passages that contradict each other? Quote them.

Compare with what you were supposed to find:

a contradiction: the deposit is €300 in article 3, and €250 in article 7;
a gap: article 8 refers to an appendix for cancellation, but there is no appendix;
another gap: the document does not say when the deposit is returned.

If the AI missed one of the three, tell it, and see whether it corrects itself without inventing others. If it found everything on the first try, good. The goal is not to catch it out, but to know how to check: do step 4 anyway.

4Step 4: Check two passages

Pick two points from the summary. Find them in the document with your browser’s search (Ctrl + F on Windows, Cmd + F on Mac). Are the number and the meaning the same?

Your turn

A real long document that you have the right to share: a club’s rules, the terms of a service, a manual, an article, a public report.

Give it to your assistant (by uploading it, or by pasting the text).
Ask for a summary targeted on your question, with the passages.
Ask what is missing and what contradicts itself.
Check at least 3 passages in the original.

Resources to download

Rental terms for the Tilleuls Hall: the fictional document for the lesson, with its traps.

Check your work

It worked if:

the summary answers your question, at the length you asked for;
each point gives its passage, and you found at least 3 of them in the original;
you have a list of what the document does not say;
on the fictional document: the contradictory deposit and the missing appendix are spotted.

Common mistakes:

“Summarize” with no question: the summary is useful to no one in particular;
believing a number in the summary without opening the original: that is where the errors hide;
uploading a confidential document, or one full of information about other people;
giving a long scanned PDF (photos of pages): beyond 100 pages, Claude reads only the text of a PDF, not the images; split it into shorter parts.

Keep it and pick it up later

Store your targeted summary request in your library, with brackets for [my situation] and [my question].
For an important document (lease, contract), keep the list of what is missing: these are the questions you need to ask.

Going further

optional

To cite a page of a PDF, Claude’s help advises using the page number from your PDF reader, not the one printed on the document.
To compare two documents (two quotes, two versions of a contract), give both and ask: “What changes between the two? Quote the passages.”

New words

4 words explained

Word	What it means
Targeted summary	A summary that answers your question, for your situation
Synthesis	A text that brings together the essentials of one or several documents
Passage	The exact sentence from the original document that proves a point in the summary
Upload a file	Attach a document to the conversation, instead of pasting its text

To be checked: Claude’s help does not state a limit specific to the free plan for file uploads; a screenshot of the upload button still has to be taken, in English.