Convert Digital Editions .annot file?

schmuttis · 02-04-2022, 01:18 PM

Is it possible to convert the .annot file that is created by Adoble Digital Editions to something readable by Calibre?

I've been reading a book in Adoble Digital Editions and making a LOT of highlights. So far I've marked up about 500 pages. Everything was fine until yesterday - Digital Editions hung and closed and I lost an entire day's work. I then when back and re-added these highlights and did several more hours of work. You got it - Digital Editions crapped out and I lost all of the day's work. I do have all of my work up to the day before in an .annot file so was wondering if I could somehow convert this to use in Calibre. I've learned my lesson not to use Digital Editions again.

Thanks for any suggestions or help.

kovidgoyal · 02-04-2022, 09:13 PM

I dont know of any tools that will do an automated conversion sorry. You can rename the .annots file to .txt and try opening it in an editor, IIRC most of the file contents are human readable.

davidfor · 02-05-2022, 01:20 AM

@schmuttis: The annot file is XML. It contains all the information in it to find the location in an epub for where an annotation should be. It would be possible to convert the locations in it the format that calibre uses. I have done it manually in the past just to check I was right, but, I haven't seen any automation to do it. The closest I have seen is a script to read the database on a Kobo device and add the annotations to calibre. That might be a starting point for anyone wanting to do this.

And for the record, I maintain the Annotations plugin. I occasionally say I will update that to save the annotations as calibre annotations. But, it hasn't risen to the top of my TODO list yet. It probably isn't going to be that hard, and adding annot file support would be relatively easy. But, that isn't going to help you at the moment.

02-04-2022, 01:18 PM	#1
schmuttis Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2022 Device: calibre, kindle	Convert Digital Editions .annot file? Is it possible to convert the .annot file that is created by Adoble Digital Editions to something readable by Calibre? I've been reading a book in Adoble Digital Editions and making a LOT of highlights. So far I've marked up about 500 pages. Everything was fine until yesterday - Digital Editions hung and closed and I lost an entire day's work. I then when back and re-added these highlights and did several more hours of work. You got it - Digital Editions crapped out and I lost all of the day's work. I do have all of my work up to the day before in an .annot file so was wondering if I could somehow convert this to use in Calibre. I've learned my lesson not to use Digital Editions again. Thanks for any suggestions or help.

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02-04-2022, 09:13 PM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,331 Karma: 27182818 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	I dont know of any tools that will do an automated conversion sorry. You can rename the .annots file to .txt and try opening it in an editor, IIRC most of the file contents are human readable.

02-05-2022, 01:20 AM	#3
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,905 Karma: 47303824 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	@schmuttis: The annot file is XML. It contains all the information in it to find the location in an epub for where an annotation should be. It would be possible to convert the locations in it the format that calibre uses. I have done it manually in the past just to check I was right, but, I haven't seen any automation to do it. The closest I have seen is a script to read the database on a Kobo device and add the annotations to calibre. That might be a starting point for anyone wanting to do this. And for the record, I maintain the Annotations plugin. I occasionally say I will update that to save the annotations as calibre annotations. But, it hasn't risen to the top of my TODO list yet. It probably isn't going to be that hard, and adding annot file support would be relatively easy. But, that isn't going to help you at the moment.

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