Thoughts Brewing Blog

BizTech Q&A 45: NotebookLM Source Issues

Written by Damien Griffin | Aug 10, 2025 10:45:00 AM

Answering your questions about business and technology

Question

Why do I keep getting a source import failed message when I try to upload my sources to NotebookLM?
~ Anonymous

Answer

Hello,

There are a few reasons why this might be happening. 

Here are the most common reasons - 

    • You exceeded 500,000 words in a single source
    • You exceeded 200MB file size in a single source
    • You exceeded 50 sources (free version) or 300 sources (Pro version)
    • Your file is copy-protected
    • You had network connectivity issues while uploading


If you are uploading multiple files, try uploading one at a time (or at least a smaller number at one time) to isolate the problem file(s).

Then you can either address the problem or leave out those sources.

Hope that helps

~ Damien