After the recent Gemini Notebook/NotebookLM update, some notes converted into sources are no longer available to chat retrieval, even though their complete content remains visible in the Source Viewer.
This is reproducible and appears specific to the note-to-source ingestion path.
Observed behaviour
- I open the affected source and can see the complete text.
- Ctrl+F successfully finds text throughout the source.
- I select only that source and ask Gemini Notebook to retrieve exact body text.
- Gemini Notebook reports that the source contains only its automatically generated Markdown heading, for example:
“##### Master CV”
It cannot retrieve quotations from the beginning, middle or end of the document.
Reproduction steps
- Create a note containing structured text with headings and substantive body content.
- Convert the note into a source.
- Open the resulting source and verify that the entire text is visible and searchable.
- Select only that source in chat.
- Ask for exact quotations from the beginning, middle and end, each with a citation.
- Chat reports that only the source heading is available and cannot retrieve any body text.
I recreated a completely new note containing the same text and converted it into a new source. The new source produced the same failure, so this is not limited to an old or stale source object.
A/B control test
I copied the identical text into a Google Docs file and added that file as a source in the same notebook.
Results:
- Converted-note source: FAIL — only the Markdown heading is available to retrieval.
- Google Docs source containing identical text: PASS — body text is retrieved correctly from the beginning, middle and end.
I have reproduced the failure with at least two separate converted-note sources:
- Master CV
- Casebank
Another shorter converted-note source remains retrievable, so the problem may depend on document length, structure, chunking or another property of the note.
Impact
This is a silent data-integrity problem. The complete source appears correctly imported and remains visible in the Source Viewer, but the retrieval layer does not receive its body text. Users therefore have no visible indication that the source is unusable until chat fails to answer or attempts to reconstruct the missing information from other sources.
Expected behaviour
When a note is successfully converted into a source and its complete content is visible in the Source Viewer, the complete source should also be indexed and available to retrieval and citation.
Temporary workaround
Copying the affected text into Google Docs and adding the Google Docs file as a source restores retrieval.
Could the team please confirm whether this is a known regression and investigate the note-to-source parsing/indexing pipeline? A way to force reindexing of affected sources would also be helpful.
I have already reported the issue through in-product feedback and the Notebook support email