Thursday, October 20, 2011

How to Copy Text from Your Kindle

I’ve got the Kindle for iPad app on my iPad, and wanted to copy and paste some quotes from a book I was reading – which isn’t an option the app provides. Typing the quotes out manually wasn’t a task I particularly relished, so I did a little research. Turns out that any text that you highlight in the app gets saved onto your Kindle page at Amazon.com. Go to http://kindle.amazon.com and log in with your Amazon.com password. Click on “Your Highlights” at the top of the page, and it displays everything you’ve highlighted in your Kindle product, broken down by book, with the most recently highlighted book first. Then it’s a simple matter of copying and pasting what you want. This may seem a bit cumbersome, but with 111 highlighted passages in my book, this saved me a boatload of time. Hopefully it will do the same for you.

If you’ve got the Kindle on your PC, it is possible to copy and paste, although if you’ve highlighted a bunch of text, you may prefer the above method.

As an added bonus, it saves the highlighted passages from your Lutheran Study Bible too. Sweet!

13 comments:

Matt said...

Don't let the CPH copyright gestapo see this!

Anonymous said...

You can also do this (Done on a Mac, can't vouch for PC)—

1. Make a screen-shot (Shift-command-4) by dragging the crosshair over the page.

2. Change the PNG file to a PDF and open in Acrobat.

3. Under "Document", select "OCR text recognition".

4. Wait…It's text.

Scott Diekmann said...

Thanks for your tip Anonymous!

Anonymous said...

These are great tips. Thank you very much! Going back and forth to type out an excerpt is no easy task and am happy you shared this tip.

Unknown said...

Thanks so much, this is very helpful!

Scott Diekmann said...

You're welcome Maria.

Unknown said...

I can't work out how to get to the highlights page? Where do I go?

Scott Diekmann said...

M.O .E.T, go to http://kindle.amazon.com. On the amazon kindle page that pops up, hover on “Guest” in the upper right hand part of the page; then click on “sign in.” On the new page that pops up, enter your email address and your amazon.com password. Now you should be at a new amazon kindle page. Click on “Your Books” at the top of the page, which, assuming you’ve purchased any kindle books from Amazon, they should be listed on the new page that pops up. Click on a book that you’ve highlighted, which takes you to the page for that book. A little ways from the top there will be a button that says “View Your Notes & Highlights.” Click on it, and the text you’ve highlighted will pop up.

Zab said...

Thank you! This was super helpful.

Scott Diekmann said...

You're welcome Zab.

Pat said...

I used this aid many months ago but failed to thank you. Thank you for helping to provide a treasure of thoughts and words

Scott Diekmann said...

You're welcome Pat. I'm glad it was helpful.

Nathan said...

Hello, Scott

I would like to share with you too an iOS app that will be released this November 2013 that will make it more convenient for Kindle users to read and share their notes and highlights all in one place. Snippefy (http://www.snippefy.com) will be released this November 2013 and it will allow Kindle users to integrate notes and highlights to social media, Evernote, Dropbox and email.

I hope you and your readers can check it out as I find it to be a useful tool.

Thank you