How to let the agent read document up to 200 pages

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Posted on by ZN-26022205-0

Hi all, I am facing a very challenging problem. I need to create an agent that can read document up to 200 pages in word format and check if the document contain enough required information. I asked here earlier and found out that the agent could not read word files. so the plan is to change word to pdf format. however, the length of the document still exceeds the maximum capacity it can read, I do not want user to split the file to smaller pdfs manually by page cause that would not ensure the consistency between different documents. I plan to create a flow but not really sure how to build that flow when i dont have the "Word - extract content" in the actions. If you have any ideas on this, it is much appreciated, thank you!

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David_MA 14,956 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Are you referring to Word documents attached in a chat or Word documents used as knowledge sources. Either way, what is your reference that Word documents cannot be used?

Word as knowledge source: Upload files as a knowledge source - Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Learn

Word as attachment in chat: File upload in Microsoft Copilot - Microsoft Support

I don't know the exact limitations except that the file cannot be larger than 50MB, but based on my experience so far, your agent will not be very reliable if it needs to do something with a 200-page file. If you are encountering challenges with Word, a 200-page pdf is not going to improve things. The structure of pdf documents actually poses an additional challenge to Copilot to extract data using RAG retrieval. Word files provide a cleaner data source for the agent.

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CU27020548-0 9 on at

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Hi @David_MA I think the information you have linked is for the standard Copilot Chat interface. Custom agents definitely have limitations that are much smaller then 50mb.

@ZN-26022205-0 I think your best bet is to setup a flow using the AI search index that can index the file first but I haven't tried doing this myself but I can't comment Azure AI Search for PDF indexer - Microsoft Q&A

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David_MA 14,956 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Thank you for noticing my mistake CU27020548-0! I found the correct reference for chat attachments: Allow file input from users - Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Learn

It does seem odd that you can't attach a Word document in chat. However, the resource above notes pdf is limited to 40 pages, so uploading a 200-page pdf is not an option ether way. Text files are limited to 180k. While that might not sound like much content, I am currently reading the book Tom Slade, Boy Scout (Tom Slade: Boy Scout of the Moving Pictures : Percy Keese Fitzhugh : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive) and the txt version of the book is about 218 KB for a book that is over 200 pages. This would be an extra step for people interacting with the agent, but if they need to save the Word file as pdf, it is just as easy to save Word to text and then attach the file.

If someone cannot offer another solution as a work around for uploading the 200-page Word document, if users have to convert the file to another format first, I encourage the text file option over pdf. Text files seem to work well in my experience.

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