Files are the bread and butter of a Knowledge library: PDFs, spreadsheets, slides, images, audio, video — even an entire folder or ZIP archive in one go. This guide walks you through the upload itself, then demystifies what happens between clicking upload and the Ready badge appearing.
You'll need a library to upload into. If you don't have one yet, open Knowledge in the left sidebar and click + New library — it's created instantly with a default name, which you can rename inline. New to libraries altogether? Start with What is the Knowledge Library?
Upload files to a library
The whole flow lives on the Knowledge page. Four steps take you from an empty library to sources your Clones can answer from.
Open the library's Sources tab
Select Knowledge in the left sidebar, then click the library you want to add to. The library detail opens on its Sources sub-tab by default — that's where every source you add will appear.
Choose Files & Folders
Expand the library row (the chevron at its edge), open the Add Knowledge dropdown and pick Files & Folders. The other options — Website, YouTube and Link Existing Collection — add different source types; website crawling is covered in Adding website URLs.
TipNot sure a format will be accepted? The See supported formats link on the Knowledge page opens the complete catalogue — summarised in Supported file formats.
Select and upload your files
Drag files into the drop zone, or click it to open a file picker — you can typically select several at once. Each file is validated on the spot: supported files queue immediately and show a per-file progress row; unsupported ones are rejected with a per-file error.
NoteA single file can be up to 2 GB, and there's no cap on how many sources a library can hold.
Let processing run
Once the upload finishes, the platform takes over server-side: text extraction, OCR or transcription depending on the file type, then indexing. You can leave the page — processing carries on without you.
What happens after you upload
Uploading is the quick part. Afterwards each source queues for processing, and its status badge on the Sources sub-tab tells you where it is. Each file you just uploaded first appears as a lightweight Queued placeholder row in the Sources list, and turns into a real source — with its own status badge — as soon as processing picks it up:
| Badge | What it means |
|---|---|
| Queued | Waiting for, or working through, the processing pipeline |
| Review Items | Seen on website sources — discovered pages wait for your review; direct file uploads skip this step |
| Ready | Done — every Clone attached to the library can answer from this source on its next reply |
| Failed | Something went wrong — the Activity sub-tab records the reason |
For the blow-by-blow, open the Activity sub-tab. It logs every phase — Discovery, Loading, Upload to AI — and it's the authoritative place to check progress or read a failure reason.
It varies with file size, type and platform load, and IcloneU doesn't publish processing SLAs — treat any figure as a rough guide, not a promise. A few short documents are typically ready within minutes; a long PDF takes a few minutes; audio and video noticeably longer. If a source shows no movement in Activity for over half an hour, refresh the page, then re-upload it — and contact support if the new copy stalls too.
Bulk uploads: folders and archives
Adding fifty files one at a time is nobody's idea of fun. Two bulk routes bring a whole batch in through the same Files & Folders flow:
- Local folders — upload an entire directory in one operation. Every file inside is detected and processed under the normal rules for its format.
- Compressed archives — ZIP, RAR, 7z, TAR and GZ. The archive isn't indexed as one big blob; it's auto-extracted, and each file inside becomes its own source on the Sources list.
Files inside an archive that aren't in a supported format won't make it in — if something seems missing after extraction, the Activity sub-tab is the place to look.
Two things archives don't handle well: nested archives (a ZIP inside a ZIP) are undocumented behaviour, so flatten one level if a particular file matters; and a very large archive can fail at upload — split it into smaller ones if it does.
Scanned PDFs and images
No separate OCR software needed. PDFs go through both text extraction and OCR, so a contract that was printed, signed and scanned back to PDF still becomes searchable text. Image files — JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, SVG, WebP — are OCR'd too, which makes screenshots and photos of paper documents fair game.
- OCR extracts text characters only. It won't describe visuals — a chart image yields its labels, not "a chart showing Q3 revenue". If your Clone needs the interpretation, add it as a separate text source.
- Accuracy depends on resolution, contrast, font and language. Low-quality or stylised scans can be misread, so spot-check anything critical via the Activity sub-tab.
- If a scan won't read well, re-scan at a higher resolution — 300 DPI is a common minimum for reliable OCR.
- Audio and video aren't OCR'd; they're transcribed automatically instead.
Frequently asked
A single file can be up to 2 GB, and there's no limit on the number of sources a library can hold. Very large archives can still fail at upload time, though — particularly on a slow connection — in which case splitting them into smaller archives helps.
As soon as its badge reads Ready. Small text documents typically get there in minutes; audio, video and very large files take longer. These are observation-based guides, not guarantees — IcloneU doesn't publish processing SLAs. Watch the Activity sub-tab for live progress.
Yes — ZIP, RAR, 7z, TAR and GZ archives are all accepted and auto-extracted, with each file inside becoming its own source. Other archive formats, such as .zipx or .cab, aren't on the supported list.
Check its extension against Supported file formats. If the format looks right, the file may be a proprietary variant that shares the extension — re-exporting it from the original application usually resolves it. Converting to a supported cousin also works (e.g. DOC → DOCX).
Last updated July 1, 2026 · Knowledge Library
