# Best approach to import large texts for searching **URL:** \ **Category:** Ask for Help\ **Created:** [April 4, 2025, 1:19pm UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/best-approach-to-import-large-texts-for-searching/81179 "2025-04-04T13:19:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mimof](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/mimof/32/61945_2.png) [@mimof](https://community.glideapps.com/u/mimof)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 1:19pm UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/best-approach-to-import-large-texts-for-searching/81179/1 "2025-04-04T13:19:23Z")
Hi everyone, I’m building an app to replace (and enhance) the functionality in an existing WordPress website. We have ~ 15,000 ‘summary’ reports, which I will be importing into Glide Big Tables. We also have copies of the ‘Full Text’ that we used to create our summaries. Some ‘Full Texts’ are small i.e. the original PDF was only a few pages, while others could be a copy of a 50+ page PDF, so the ‘Full Text’ is large. Note that we don’t have the original PDFs, only the extracted text. What is the best way to import and store this data, so we can allow our Users to search the complete set of ‘full texts’ and get results? Any advice would be great thanks! ---
**Author:** ![nathanaelb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/nathanaelb/32/43079_2.png) [@nathanaelb](https://community.glideapps.com/u/nathanaelb)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 2:42pm UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/best-approach-to-import-large-texts-for-searching/81179/2 "2025-04-04T14:42:50Z")
> [@mimof](#): > > in an existing WordPress website I would look into exporting the content of the summary reports from WordPress into a CSV file. My only concern would be that 15,000 summary reports feels like a big number, and 50+ pages for some of these reports also sounds big. I have no idea if CSV files can contain data like that, but I would look into it. > [@mimof](#): > > What is the best way to import and store this data, so we can allow our Users to search the complete set of ‘full texts’ and get results? Before doing the operation with for 15,000 reports, and would try to set up the feature you want with 2, or 5, or 10. To me, building the feature is one thing, getting the 15,000 summary reports into Glide another. I would focus on building a mockup of the feature and testing it first. ---
**Author:** ![ThinhDinh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/thinhdinh/32/49_2.png) [@ThinhDinh](https://community.glideapps.com/u/ThinhDinh)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2025, 1:17am UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/best-approach-to-import-large-texts-for-searching/81179/3 "2025-04-05T01:17:37Z")
> [@Chat and Comments using the Trebuchet Method](https://community.glideapps.com/t/chat-and-comments-using-the-trebuchet-method/25396/4): > > According to @Jason you can store 1 million characters in a glide table cell. Google sheets limited to 50,000 characters per cell As long as your full text doesn’t contain more than 1 million characters, I think you’re good to go. ---
**Author:** ![mimof](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/mimof/32/61945_2.png) [@mimof](https://community.glideapps.com/u/mimof)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2025, 11:09am UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/best-approach-to-import-large-texts-for-searching/81179/4 "2025-04-07T11:09:23Z")
Great thanks very much @ThinhDinh and @nathanaelb for your replies. I will check out the ‘Trebuchet Method’ with a small number of examples first, and build it up. Will let you know if it works out. ---
**Author:** ![ThinhDinh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/thinhdinh/32/49_2.png) [@ThinhDinh](https://community.glideapps.com/u/ThinhDinh)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2025, 11:11pm UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/best-approach-to-import-large-texts-for-searching/81179/5 "2025-04-07T23:11:19Z")
Why do you need a “Trebuchet Method” here? Wouldn’t each document have its own row? ---
**Author:** ![mimof](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/mimof/32/61945_2.png) [@mimof](https://community.glideapps.com/u/mimof)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 9:22pm UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/best-approach-to-import-large-texts-for-searching/81179/6 "2025-04-08T21:22:34Z")
@ThinhDinh sorry, I misunderstood the quote from Robert Petito that I should check out the Trebuchet Method (I didn’t know what it was so I thought maybe it’s a way to import such data)! But I see you were referring to the 1M character limit per cell. From checking sample files today, I now know that some ‘Full Texts’ will exceed the 1M characters limit. Do you know if the rest of the ‘Full text’ for that report will be truncated during the import, or if it will just ‘drop’ that record? Hopefully it’ll be truncated and imported. Also, is there any way to do a batch import, or an alternative approach to importing that I could consider? Otherwise, I may have to split the CSV file and do ~20 separate imports to keep the file size under 5MB, which I believe is Glide’s max. import size for a CSV. Many thanks for your help. ---
**Author:** ![ThinhDinh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/thinhdinh/32/49_2.png) [@ThinhDinh](https://community.glideapps.com/u/ThinhDinh)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 11:29pm UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/best-approach-to-import-large-texts-for-searching/81179/7 "2025-04-08T23:29:26Z")
> [@mimof](#): > > Do you know if the rest of the ‘Full text’ for that report will be truncated during the import, or if it will just ‘drop’ that record? Hopefully it’ll be truncated and imported. I don’t have a sample here that I can use, but I think that would be truncated. > [@Splitting a large CSV file into multiple smaller files](https://community.glideapps.com/t/splitting-a-large-csv-file-into-multiple-smaller-files/72774): > > Just this past weekend I needed to migrate a large amount of data from a regular Glide Table to a Big Table. Glide conveniently provides import/export options directly from the Data Editor to help with this. However the file size of my exported data came out at a bit over 25MB, and the maximum size file you can import into a Big Table is 4.8MB. So my CSV file needed to be split up into smaller bite sized chunks that Glide could handle. As this is something I can see I’ll probably need to do aga… You can use the approach above to split your file. ---
**Author:** ![mimof](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/mimof/32/61945_2.png) [@mimof](https://community.glideapps.com/u/mimof)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2025, 11:20am UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/best-approach-to-import-large-texts-for-searching/81179/8 "2025-04-09T11:20:44Z")
Amazing, so helpful, thank you @ThinhDinh. It looks like after the split, I will still manually need to import each of the ~20 files, which is fine. I was thinking there might be a trick for that also, to add the files to a queue for importing one after the other. ---
**Author:** ![ThinhDinh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/thinhdinh/32/49_2.png) [@ThinhDinh](https://community.glideapps.com/u/ThinhDinh)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2025, 12:36pm UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/best-approach-to-import-large-texts-for-searching/81179/9 "2025-04-09T12:36:03Z")
It would require interacting with the API. I have only done one file at once, haven’t handled data that large before. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/system/32/53398_2.png) [@system](https://community.glideapps.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2025, 12:36pm UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/best-approach-to-import-large-texts-for-searching/81179/10 "2025-04-16T12:36:05Z")
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