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PipesHub keeps a record of every file you upload or a connector syncs. Search and chat can only use a file’s content once it has been indexed. A file in a format PipesHub can’t index still appears by name, with the status File type not supported.

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Formats PipesHub indexes

Pages, tickets, messages and other items that connectors sync from apps are indexed as well.

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Formats with extra requirements

  • PDF: scanned PDFs need a model that can read images. See Scanned PDFs.
  • E-books: copy-protected (DRM) books can’t be indexed.
  • Images: need a multimodal model. See Images.
  • Code: repositories synced from GitHub or GitLab also index other source files, such as scala, vue, sql, proto and tf.

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Formats PipesHub stores but doesn’t index

Any other format gets the status File type not supported. That includes:
  • Images in other formats, such as gif, bmp, tiff, avif, heic and heif. With USE_PARSING_SERVICE=true, heic and heif images are indexed like other images.
  • Other document formats, such as odt, rtf and xml.
  • Audio and video files.
  • Archives and other binary files, such as zip.
To make one searchable, convert it to a format in the table above and upload it again. For example, export an odt file as docx or PDF, or a heic photo as jpg.

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Images

Indexing an image needs a model that can read images: either a chat model with Multimodal turned on or a multimodal embedding model. See AI models. Without one, the image gets the status Needs multimodal model. Add or turn on a multimodal model, then use Retry indexing on the file. What indexing keeps of each image:
  • Images are scaled down to at most 2000 pixels on the long edge and 5 MB.
  • A single file keeps at most 50 MB of images. Images past that limit aren’t kept.
  • SVG images are converted to PNG first.

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Scanned PDFs

A PDF whose pages have readable text is read directly and is not sent to OCR. PipesHub treats a PDF as scanned when at least half of the pages it checks have no readable text, even if other pages have a text layer. Reading those pages needs a model that can read images. Add a chat model with Multimodal turned on in Workspace → AI models, then reindex the file. Without one, the file fails with a message that says so. OCR makes one model call per page, so a scan longer than 500 pages is refused.

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Password-protected files

PipesHub can’t read a file that needs a password to open. These files get the status Password protected:
  • PDFs that need a password to open. A PDF restricted only by an owner password (for example, against printing) opens and is indexed.
  • docx, xlsx and pptx files with a password.
Remove the password, delete the protected file from the collection, then upload the unlocked copy. An upload is skipped when a file with the same name and type is already there. For a file synced from a connected app, remove the password at the source; Retry indexing reads it again. Password-protected doc, xls and ppt files aren’t detected as such. They fail with an error instead.

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Upload size

Uploads to a collection are limited to 30 MB per file by default. An admin can change the limit, up to 1000 MB, under Workspace → Labs → File upload limit.