Recovery from a KPF File Derived from a Fixed Format eBook
If you opened up a fixed format KPF file as a zip file(as described above) then you will also get a
book.docx and
book.kcb file. Unfortunately, if you opened the
book.docx in Word then all you would get is a "fixed format" Word doc where every page will contain a full jpeg image of the page text. So that's no good for text recovery. So the only way to recover your fixed format ebook is by recovering your book(as a Word doc) from the original PDF file that you loaded into KC. It's also worth noting, for fixed format ebooks created in Kindle Create, that the most important master file to save is the original Word doc because the
book.kcb project file just contains images of all pages -- so you can't make any significant changes to the text, styling or layout using the KCB file.
Essentially there are only three ways that you can recover your Word doc from a PDF file and the choice is yours. These options are described below:
Use Adobe Acrobat DC to convert your PDF file to Word doc Format
Adobe Acrobat DC is a paid-for cloud application with a powerful PDF to Word conversion option. You can also directly edit your PDF file using Adobe Acrobat DC. Using this option you can directly convert your PDF file to Word doc format easily.
"Nuking" the book text in the PDF File
This method involves doing the following:
1. Upload your PDF file to the PDFOnline website and convert your PDF file to Word doc format.
2. Download your new Word doc and save it to your desktop.
3. Open your new Word doc in MS Word or LibreOffice Writer.
4. Select and copy all the book text in your Word doc by using Ctl-A and then Ctl-C.
5. Open the Notepad text editor and just paste all your book text directly into the editor using Ctl-V. When you do this in Notepad it automatically removes all the formatting and styling from the book text. This is also sometimes referred to as "nuking" all the styles.
6. Now select and copy all the unstyled book text in Notepad by using Ctl-A and Ctl-C.
7. Then paste the book text into a blank MS Word document or blank LibreOffice Writer document using Ctl-V.
8. What you will now have to do is completely reformat and restyle your book text from scratch in MS Word or LibreOffice Writer.
Using PDFOnline to convert your PDF file to Word doc format.
Just upload your PDF file to the PDFOnline website and use their PDF-to-Word converter to convert the PDF file to Word doc format and download the new Word doc to your desktop. Then just open your newly recovered Word doc in MS Word or LibreOffice Writer and check it. Then save and convert your Word doc to a PDF file using MS Word or LW – and ensure that you set "PDF/A" quality in PDF Options before conversion. After carefully checking the PDF file for errors using Adobe Acrobat(free) you can then load the PDF into Kindle Create and eventually save it as both a KCB project file and a KPF upload file – and this time be sure to save your master Word doc somewhere safe!! When I tested this PDF recovery method I found that it worked quite well. The only problem that I had in Kindle Create with my test PDF using PDFOnline was that one of my ebook images wasn't centered in the generated Word doc after conversion. But I was quickly able to re-center the image in MS Word and convert it to PDF for loading into Kindle Create without any problems. This is perhaps the fastest and cheapest way to recover your Word doc from a PDF file.