---
title: "Perplexity Searches the Web Instead of My PDF. How Do I Make It Use Only My Document?"  
description: "Perplexity Searches the Web Instead of My PDF. How Do I Make It Use Only My Document?"  
author: "Manish Kumar"  
published: 2026-09-06  
updated: 2026-09-06  
canonical: https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/117154/perplexity-searches-the-web-instead-of-my-pdf-how-do-i-make-it-use-only-my-document  
category: "artificial-intelligence"  
tags: ["artificial intelligence", "llm"]  
reading_time: 1 minute  

---

# Perplexity Searches the Web Instead of My PDF. How Do I Make It Use Only My Document?

**I upload a PDF to Perplexity and ask a question, and instead of reading my file it goes off and searches the web. How do I make it just use the document?**

## Answers

### Answer by Rana Sunny

You have to tell it, otherwise it guesses. Start your question with "Using only the attached file," and it'll stay in the document. Without that, a general question makes it think you want a web search.

If it still isn't reading the file, check three things. File size, the limit depends on your plan and it fails quietly if you're over. File type, scanned PDFs (images) don't work, convert to text first. And on the free plan there's a daily cap on uploads.

If you're going to ask a lot of questions about the same documents, make a Space and put them in there. Then they stay attached and you're not re-uploading every time.


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Original Source: https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/117154/perplexity-searches-the-web-instead-of-my-pdf-how-do-i-make-it-use-only-my-document

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