Desktop App Reading annotated ebook from device

[Gergely]

I have read a number of chapters from an ebook and highlighted the important material.

I would like to read those on my Windows box using Kobo Desktop / Calibre / Anything that works.

Now, I cannot even download my ebooks to Kobo Desktop. It shows that I have books on my reader but syncing seems to be only in one direction, _to_ the device.

Calibre has an abandoned plugin for this but it does not work for Kobo as I understand:

https://github.com/whacked/calibre-viewer-annotation

So, how can I import my highlighting annotations from my Kobo Aura H2O into a Windows ebook reader program so I can use them in work?

[PeterT]

See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=241206 but I believe you will be disappointed. The issue is there is no standard for how annotations are stored, exchanged and used by reading applications.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Mivey]

I can view them on the Desktop app, but you need to download the book for that, so if you can't do that, you are out of luck.
Looking at the app, it's almost amazing how poorly designed it is. You can't copy text from the book, say to look up a phrase. And the inbuilt "look up" function does nothing. Guess it doesn't like that I have Firefox as my default browser.
Would be nice to be able to just access the Annotations without changing the status of the book.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Gergely

I have read a number of chapters from an ebook and highlighted the important material.

I would like to read those on my Windows box using Kobo Desktop / Calibre / Anything that works.

Now, I cannot even download my ebooks to Kobo Desktop. It shows that I have books on my reader but syncing seems to be only in one direction, _to_ the device.

The Kobo desktop application is only for books purchased from Kobo. They sync these books, reading status and annotation through their server. Nothing about sideloaded books is synced.

Calibre has an abandoned plugin for this but it does not work for Kobo as I understand:

https://github.com/whacked/calibre-viewer-annotation

I remember I had a quick look at that sometime in the past and wasn't happy with it. I don't remember why. And it hasn't had any work done on it recently, so either the author lost interest or he got it to a point where he considered that it worked. Unfortunately, I think it was the former.

So, how can I import my highlighting annotations from my Kobo Aura H2O into a Windows ebook reader program so I can use them in work?

You can't. As PeterT pointed out, there is no standard for annotations. Or at least none that has actually been implemented in enough places to be useful. I'm not sure if this is because no-one is really that interested, or they consider it hard. Or if it is simply they have higher priority things to do. Kovid has stated that he will add annotations to the calibre viewer. But, he hasn't stated when and I haven't seen any sign of the work starting. When that does happen, I will be looking at how to get the annotations from a Kobo device to the viewer. Unfortunately, I don't expect to be doing that any time soon.

At the moment, I think the best choices are the Annotations plugin that PeterT pointed to (of which I am the current maintainer), [thread=]262912Toxatis's Annotation Exporter[/thread] or simply opening the annotation list on the device while reading the book elsewhere. Personally, I mostly do the last one, but most of my annotations are to fix problems in the book (spelling, grammar and layout) and that works for me.

[rashkae]

I don't know if this will be any help for what you are trying to achieve, but Kobo has a very little known undocumented feature to export your highlights into a text file.

For me, it has worked great, but the limitation here, of course, is that you are unable to view your annotations in context. (You only get the highlighted text.)

To enable this feature, you have to edit the .kobo/Kobo/Kobo eReader.conf file

Under the subheading [FeatureSettings] add:
ExportHighlights=true

I don't know if it would cause a problem for Kobo, but it has been observed that this file is in Unix text format, (which is a little different from Windows at the end of Lines.). It is therefore suggested to use an application called Notepad++ to edit this file, as that will preserve the original format.

Restart the Kobo, and you should now be able to long press on a book in your Library and have an option to export all highlights as a text file.

[drjd]

Yet another little Windows based utility to export annotations from Kobo devices is ' Annotation Extractor' by tshering. I have used this utility frequently to collect highlights and annotations from various books on my Kobo Glo, to text files saved on my computer.

[JohhnyMix]

Originally Posted by rashkae

I don't know if this will be any help for what you are trying to achieve, but Kobo has a very little known undocumented feature to export your highlights into a text file.

For me, it has worked great, but the limitation here, of course, is that you are unable to view your annotations in context. (You only get the highlighted text.)

To enable this feature, you have to edit the .kobo/Kobo/Kobo eReader.conf file

Under the subheading [FeatureSettings] add:
ExportHighlights=true

I don't know if it would cause a problem for Kobo, but it has been observed that this file is in Unix text format, (which is a little different from Windows at the end of Lines.). It is therefore suggested to use an application called Notepad++ to edit this file, as that will preserve the original format.

Restart the Kobo, and you should now be able to long press on a book in your Library and have an option to export all highlights as a text file.

Sweet, i just added this and works like a charm so thumbs up for sharing.

[Gergely]

Thank you all for your valuable answers.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by rashkae

I don't know if it would cause a problem for Kobo, but it has been observed that this file is in Unix text format, (which is a little different from Windows at the end of Lines.). It is therefore suggested to use an application called Notepad++ to edit this file, as that will preserve the original format.

Notepad in Windows 10 1803 will include proper end-of-line handling:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/com...ol-in-notepad/

FINALLY, decades later.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Notepad in Windows 10 1803 will include proper end-of-line handling ...

FINALLY, decades later.

Too late.

However people using Windows and UNIX/Linux & embedded systems have been using free open source text editors on Windows for maybe 20 years?

Not all alternatives are free or opensource, but all better than Notepad.
Notepad++ can be customised for writing or programming. I like it so much I install it on every Windows PC I set up and now also run it under Wine on Linux.

I was trying to use Win10 on a Netbook/Tablet combo yesterday. No settings for keyboard touch pad which appears as a mouse only, yet slightest brush jumps cursor, or if both hands brush it zooms text in/out. So makes using ANY text editor impossible. Only solution is an external mouse and disable the "mouse" in drivers (which is the touchpad on the USB Keyboard dock).
Then in the middle of edit it rebooted and started installing updates. Even though on WiFi and set to "metered".

So the update to Notepad is FAR too late. They've broken Windows.