Supported file types

Overview

Most uploaded files are converted to PDF, if they are not already in PDF format, and exposed as a PDF document in the Documents view.

For non-audio formats, Pinpoint extracts text from the uploaded file using OCR (optical character recognition).

For audio files, Pinpoint employs speech-to-text technology to transcribe the audio file according to the audio file language configuration for the collection.

The following file types can be uploaded to Pinpoint. Each file type has a maximum file size, and a set of supported formats. If a file exceeds the size limit, the file will be rejected and you will see a warning after the upload attempt.

PDF (including scans, text, and images in PDF format)
Audio
Video (audio extracted and transcribed, video not stored)
Email
Image
Web page
Google Documents (Docs, Slides)
Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
Plain text (not text within a PDF)

Unsupported file formats

It's possible that the list of file types or formats shown here is out of date; if you have a file of another format, try uploading it to see if Pinpoint can upload it. If not, or if the upload doesn't seem to work well, then save your file as PDF and upload that.

PDF

Pinpoint can analyze print or hand-written text in PDF files, as well as text within embedded images in a PDF file.

Google performs OCR (optical character recognition) analysis on all PDF content, including images and hand-written text. The language of any text found will be inferred; you do not need to change any settings in your collection to accommodate the language of your PDF file. A PDF file can even contain mixed languages.

When scanning papers to upload, try to flatten the pages as much as possible, and keep the orientation of the page in normal reading orientation (don't rotate the page by 90 degrees) if possible. A good rule of thumb is whether or not you can read the scans easily.

Maximum file size: 1GB

File splitting

Source files over 500MB (except audio files) will be split into smaller PDF documents, with each PDF document displayed separately in your documents view.

Source files under 500MB with a lot of textual information (for example, a 21MB PDF file with 7,000 pages of text) will also be split into multiple files.

Audio

You can upload audio files to Pinpoint in order to create a searchable (and downloadable) transcript.

After processing, the audio file is exposed as a text transcript in your collection, with an embedded audio player for the uploaded file.

You can download the transcript by opening the transcript, then clicking the menu item > Download transcript.

Additional notes:

Only one language can be extracted from an audio file. This language is specified by the Audio file spoken language setting for your collection (see below).

Supported audio formats: MP3, MP4, M4A, WAV, FLAC, WMA, AAC, RA, RAM, AIF, AIFF, OGG

Maximum file size: 8GB or 2 hours of audio when played at normal speed, whichever is lower.

To upload an audio file:

First confirm that your audio file upload language is set for the language of the files to upload.
Upload the file or files in the normal fashion. Audio files can be batch uploaded along with non-audio files.
You can edit the auto-generated transcription in Pinpoint by clicking Edit if the transcription was incorrect.

Video

You can upload video files to Pinpoint in order to create a searchable (and downloadable) transcript.

During processing, the audio file is extracted and used to create a text transcript in your collection, accompanied by an embedded audio player.

You can download the transcript by opening the transcript, then clicking the menu item > Download transcript.

Additional notes:

Only one language can be extracted from a video file. This language is specified by the Audio file spoken language setting for your collection (see below).

Supported video formats: MP4, MPEG, MOV, WMV, AVI, 3GPP, WEBM, MP2T, FLV, OGV, MKV, M4V.

Maximum file size: 8GB or 2 hours of video when played at normal speed, whichever is lower.

To upload a video file:

First confirm that your audio file upload language is set for the language of the files to upload.
Upload the file or files in the normal fashion. Video files can be batch uploaded along with non-video files.
You can edit the auto-generated transcription in Pinpoint by clicking Edit if the transcription was incorrect.

Emails

You can upload saved emails to Pinpoint in the formats specified below, or you can save an email to PDF format and upload it as a PDF.

If the uploaded email has attachments, these will be available when viewing the document in Pinpoint, but the contents of any attachments are not processed and are not searchable in Pinpoint.

Supported formats: EML, MBOX

Images

Uploaded images are scanned for text, and the uploaded image is saved as a PDF document in your collection. You can upload the following file formats directly. You can also upload images embedded in a PDF file with or without other content (images are treated the same whether uploaded individually or embedded within another file). If you have handwritten pages or notes, you can upload them either as bare images or as images embedded in PDF.

Supported formats: JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF

Maximum file size: 10MB

Web pages

Downloaded web pages can be uploaded, including embedded images. You'll need to choose the proper formatting and file format depending on whether you want images included in the upload. You cannot upload a live page from the internet by URL; you must download it locally, and then upload it to Pinpoint.

To save a web page locally in Chrome, open the page in the browser, and click File > Save page as and choose one of the options. "HTML only" does not upload images, styles, or dynamic elements such as user comments. Other options might save these extra items and formatting. If you're unsure which format to use, try saving a copy in each format and then viewing them in your browser. Some options might also save a page as a folder of multiple files, which isn't supported by Pinpoint; you can only upload a single file for a web page.

Supported formats: HTML, MHT, MHTML

Google Documents

Google Docs and Slides can be added. Files will be converted to static PDF format and added to your collection. Any changes made to your Google Docs and Slides after addition will not be represented in your collection.

Supported formats: Google Docs, Google Presentations

Maximum file size: 10MB

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office files can be uploaded. Files must be uploaded from your computer; you can't upload a web-hosted Office 365 file by URL.

Supported formats: DOC, DOCX (Word); XLS, XLSX (Excel); PPT, PPTX (Powerpoint)

Maximum file size: 10MB

Plain text

Plain text files of the following types can be uploaded directly. If you have text embedded within a PDF or other container file, the rules of the container file format apply.

Supported formats: TXT, RTF, CSV

Maximum file size: 10MB