Capturing Your Notes from the Kindle PC App

By John R. Aberle | Small Business Productivity Tips

Nov 21
Kindle PC App Video Thumbnail for Aberle Enterprises post AbeEnt-150

Have you ever heard the advice to be a lifelong learner? If you’re like me, you believe that and practice it, constantly learning something new. In fact, I consider that part of a “business lifestyle.” No doubt that means you too like to highlight and make notes on books you read.

Then you must do something to get access to those notes and highlighted passages. Of course, you can do any of the following:

  • Manually hand-write them down or type them into a Word document
  • Copy and paste individual paragraphs into a Word document from your Kindle eBook
  • Copy and paste your eBook highlights and notes from https://read.amazon.com/

Or, you can take advantage of the easiest way to get your highlights and notes thanks to the latest advance in Amazon Kindle’s PC app. This article will walk you through the steps to get all your highlights and notes at one time.

As a coach or consultant, you will find this capability from Amazon extremely useful when doing research. If you are a small business owner or entrepreneur, likewise you may find it useful to do research for your sales and marketing presentations. Perhaps you want to write your own book to establish your credibility as an authority, so you would need research for quotes.

  • Research for articles
  • Repurpose into quotations for books
  • Capture figures and quotations for sales presentations
  • Recover your own notes and annotations without manually pouring back through the eBook
  • Extract quotations for social media posts
  • Study notes for class work
  • Write book reviews

Thankfully, Amazon included four colors you can choose to use for highlighting. To give you an idea of how useful it is to have more than one color when highlighting, the following is my color scheme.

  • Yellow – normal highlight
  • Gold – special emphasis
  • Pink – spelling error, grammar error, subject verb disagreement
  • Blue – quote for a special or side project, e.g. a book I’m working on that is unrelated to the main topic

Steps to Capture Your Highlights and Notes from the Kindle PC app

  • Open the Kindle PC App
  • Open the book you want your highlights and notes from
  • On the bar below the main navigation bar, you will see “Library” on the far left and “Show Notebook” on the far right.
  • Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Show Notebook button

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Show Notebook button

    • Click on “Show Notebook”
    • Now you see “Flashcards” and “Export” buttons in the right sidebar above your highlights and notes.
    • Click on “Export”
    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Flashcards-Export Choices

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Flashcards-Export Choices

    Your next screen allows you to “Add any additional notes to your exported file.” You have up to 10,000 characters, e.g. “This export is being used in an Aberle Enterprises article for a productivity tip about exporting your highlights and notes so you can use them for other purposes without having to type out the quotes you want from this book.”

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Export options

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Export options

    The following screen shows that there are limits set by the author as to how much you can export.

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Export limits

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Export limits

    The following is the note that I added: “This export is being used in an Aberle Enterprises article for a productivity tip about exporting your highlights and notes so you can use them for other purposes without having to type out the quotes you want from this book.”

    Screen capture of Highlighted Kindle PC App - Export note added

    Highlighted Kindle PC App - Export note added

    • You need to Click on “Save As

    You will now see the Save As screen with the default name (the title) of this book and “-Notebook” appended to the end, e.g. “Kindle Bestseller Publishing Write a Bestseller in 30 Days! (Beginner Internet Marketing Series Book 5)-Notebook”

    • Choose the location where you want to save the file

    In addition to either accepting the name or placing your own name on the document you want to save, you need to choose the location you want to save the file. The default location is in the area of hidden files, i.e. “\AppData\Local\Amazon\Kindle\application.”

    Kindle PC App screen capture of Export with file name

    Kindle PC App screen capture of Export with file name

    • Default location: C:\Users\johna\AppData\Local\Amazon\Kindle\application
    • Changed location (my choice): This PC > Desktop >
    • Put in the file name you want or accept what the Kindle app gives you, e.g. Kindle Bestseller Publishing Write a Bestseller in 30 Days! (Beginner Internet Marketing Series Book 5)-Notebook
    • Save
    • You will see a message that the app is exporting: “Export Notebook from Entire Book.”
    • Find the file in the directory where you sent the export.
    • Open the exported file, an “.html’ file, with your favorite browser.

    You can now copy and paste your notes and highlights into your preferred document editor, e.g. Microsoft Word: "Kindle Bestseller Publishing - Write a Bestseller in 30 Days - Beginner Internet Marketing Series Book 5 - Notes and Highlights.docx."

    DUE TO A TECHNICAL PROBLEM THIS MORNING, THIS ARTICLE IS IN THE PROCESS OF BEING RE-POSTED - I apologize for the inconvenience.

    Have you ever heard the advice to be a lifelong learner? If you’re like me, you believe that and practice it, constantly learning something new. In fact, I consider that part of a “business lifestyle.” No doubt that means you too like to highlight and make notes on books you read.

    Then you must do something to get access to those notes and highlighted passages. Of course, you can do any of the following:

    • Manually hand-write them down or type them into a Word document
    • Copy and paste individual paragraphs into a Word document from your Kindle eBook
    • Copy and paste your eBook highlights and notes from https://read.amazon.com/

    Or, you can take advantage of the easiest way to get your highlights and notes thanks to the latest advance in Amazon Kindle’s PC app. This article will walk you through the steps to get all your highlights and notes at one time.

    As a coach or consultant, you will find this capability from Amazon extremely useful when doing research. If you are a small business owner or entrepreneur, likewise you may find it useful to do research for your sales and marketing presentations. Perhaps you want to write your own book to establish your credibility as an authority, so you would need research for quotes.

    • Research for articles
    • Repurpose into quotations for books
    • Capture figures and quotations for sales presentations
    • Recover your own notes and annotations without manually pouring back through the eBook
    • Extract quotations for social media posts
    • Study notes for class work
    • Write book reviews

    Thankfully, Amazon included four colors you can choose to use for highlighting. To give you an idea of how useful it is to have more than one color when highlighting, the following is my color scheme.

    • Yellow – normal highlight
    • Gold – special emphasis
    • Pink – spelling error, grammar error, subject verb disagreement
    • Blue – quote for a special or side project, e.g. a book I’m working on that is unrelated to the main topic

    Steps to Capture Your Highlights and Notes from the Kindle PC app

  • Open the Kindle PC App
  • Open the book you want your highlights and notes from
  • On the bar below the main navigation bar, you will see “Library” on the far left and “Show Notebook” on the far right.
  • Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Show Notebook button

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Show Notebook button

    • Click on “Show Notebook”
    • Now you see “Flashcards” and “Export” buttons in the right sidebar above your highlights and notes.
    • Click on “Export”
    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Flashcards-Export Choices

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Flashcards-Export Choices

    Your next screen allows you to “Add any additional notes to your exported file.” You have up to 10,000 characters, e.g. “This export is being used in an Aberle Enterprises article for a productivity tip about exporting your highlights and notes so you can use them for other purposes without having to type out the quotes you want from this book.”

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Export options

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Export options

    The following screen shows that there are limits set by the author as to how much you can export.

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Export limits

    Annotated Kindle PC App screen capture with Export limits

    The following is the note that I added: “This export is being used in an Aberle Enterprises article for a productivity tip about exporting your highlights and notes so you can use them for other purposes without having to type out the quotes you want from this book.”

    Screen capture of Highlighted Kindle PC App - Export note added

    Highlighted Kindle PC App - Export note added

    • You need to Click on “Save As

    You will now see the Save As screen with the default name (the title) of this book and “-Notebook” appended to the end, e.g. “Kindle Bestseller Publishing Write a Bestseller in 30 Days! (Beginner Internet Marketing Series Book 5)-Notebook”

    • Choose the location where you want to save the file

    In addition to either accepting the name or placing your own name on the document you want to save, you need to choose the location you want to save the file. The default location is in the area of hidden files, i.e. “AppDataLocalAmazonKindleapplication.”

    Kindle PC App screen capture of Export with file name

    Kindle PC App screen capture of Export with file name

    • Default location: C:UsersjohnaAppDataLocalAmazonKindleapplication
    • Changed location (my choice): This PC > Desktop >
    • Put in the file name you want or accept what the Kindle app gives you, e.g. Kindle Bestseller Publishing Write a Bestseller in 30 Days! (Beginner Internet Marketing Series Book 5)-Notebook
    • Save
    • You will see a message that the app is exporting: “Export Notebook from Entire Book.”
    • Find the file in the directory where you sent the export.
    • Open the exported file, an “.html’ file, with your favorite browser.

    You can now copy and paste your notes and highlights into your preferred document editor, e.g. Microsoft Word: Kindle Bestseller Publishing - Write a Bestseller in 30 Days - Beginner Internet Marketing Series Book 5 - Notes and Highlights.docx.

    JRA Note:

    I tried capturing the information with OneNote Clipper and Evernote Clipper. Both gave me a message that this type of file can’t be clipped by them. Evernote explained that it was a restriction by the browser for that kind of file. This happened with both Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

    That’s all there is too it. You can now save hours of time getting your highlights and notes from your Kindle eBooks. Certainly, if you do less highlighting than I do, you may only save a half hour or so. Keep in mind, if you are studying more than one book a year, this productivity tip can still mean hours or even days of your time throughout a year.

    Takeaways

    The Amazon Kindle PC app now makes it extremely easy to get your highlights and notes out of your Kindle eBooks into an HTML document. From there, you can copy and paste them into your favorite word processor, e.g. Microsoft Word, or text processor so you can repurpose them.

    Conclusion

    Whether you’re a coach, consultant, small business owner or entrepreneur, the latest version of the Amazon Kindle PC app makes it easy to access your highlights and notes in a Kindle eBook, so you can capture them by first exporting them into an HTML document then cutting and pasting into a word or text processor. From there you can repurpose the highlights and your notes into study pages, social media posts, research for books and articles or for sales presentations.

    Open your heart in selling,

    John's signature in Rage Italic script

    John R. Aberle

    Aberle Enterprises

    P.S.

    Do you love taking care of your customers and prospects? If you yearn to build more long-term business connections with your customers, get your copy of the Amazon Kindle eBook:

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    About the Author

    I have a strong love for small businesses, especially brick and mortar companies. After an 18-year career in sales and marketing, I started my own service company, which I grew in both sales and profits for the first five years. In my sixth year, the bottom dropped out of the printer market such that it made more sense to sell my assets and return to Southern California. There I went to work for an international small business consulting company. I spent over three years on the road with them helping small businesses to become more profitable and better managed. I then started my own company specializing in sales and marketing consulting, coaching and training. My emphasis is on heart-centered, relationship selling that empowers prospects to make their own choices.