Annotations/highlights on Kobo

[MHaensel]

On my Kindle Touch, I highlight or add notes to a book. The notes go in a separate text file I can easily access, copy, or delete. This is a good fit for my workflow.

I'm considering purchasing a Kobo Aura H2O. It brings lots of improvements, but notes and highlights seem to work very differently on the Kobo. I've seen several posts asking about particular aspects, but I could use some help with the big picture.

If I make highlights/annotations for several books on the Kobo:
1. Is there an easy, centralized way to access all my notes, or do I have to go through book-by-book on the device?
2. I see Calibre mentioned as being able to put annotations in the comments of a book. Do I have to reimport each book to Calibre from the Kobo? Will this delete the comments I've already put in Calibre?

I'll be happy to add specifics if that will make my questions more clear. Thanks in advance!

[MHaensel]

Hopefully others will fact-check me if I've found something incorrect. Based on my reading, and experiments with the Kobo desktop reader:
1. All highlighted text and annotations are stored in the Kobo.sqlite file.
2. The text is stored in the file (essentially) by book, so you do need to click through each book to extract the annotations. This may work differently in Calibre.
3. The annotation information isn't as extensive as the Amazon setup. You get text and no location information.

I'm not knocking either platform; Kobos have several other advantages that may outweigh the inconvenience of this for me. It's more a FYI for others considering the jump.

For others with the same question, I found some helpful threads:
How to save highlighted portions of books, which includes a link to a stand-alone program that extracts highlights and annotations from the Kobo.sqlite file.
A Kobo Utilities plugin for Calibre is also available, that has somewhat similar functionality among other stuff.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by MHaensel

Hopefully others will fact-check me if I've found something incorrect. Based on my reading, and experiments with the Kobo desktop reader:
1. All highlighted text and annotations are stored in the Kobo.sqlite file.

Correct. But, if the book is an epub in the main memory of the device, it is also written to a file.

2. The text is stored in the file (essentially) by book, so you do need to click through each book to extract the annotations. This may work differently in Calibre.

Correct to both places.

3. The annotation information isn't as extensive as the Amazon setup. You get text and no location information.

Where do you mean? The annotations list shows the chapter where the annotation is. Plus a percent. For epubs, the percent is from the start of the book but for kepubs, it is from the start of the chapter.

The database has the exact location of the start and end of the annotation.

I'm not knocking either platform; Kobos have several other advantages that may outweigh the inconvenience of this for me. It's more a FYI for others considering the jump.

For others with the same question, I found some helpful threads:
How to save highlighted portions of books, which includes a link to a stand-alone program that extracts highlights and annotations from the Kobo.sqlite file.
A Kobo Utilities plugin for Calibre is also available, that has somewhat similar functionality among other stuff.

The annotations display in the utilities plugin was something I did quickly and intended to improve but could never come up with a better way. The Annotations plugin is the better way. Still not ideal as it is only one way and doesn't have an export function.

[MHaensel]

Where do you mean? The annotations list shows the chapter where the annotation is. Plus a percent. For epubs, the percent is from the start of the book but for kepubs, it is from the start of the chapter.

The database has the exact location of the start and end of the annotation.
<snip>
The annotations display in the utilities plugin was something I did quickly and intended to improve but could never come up with a better way. The Annotations plugin is the better way. Still not ideal as it is only one way and doesn't have an export function.

Using KTAnnotationsExtractor.exe, I just get:

>>>Title: The Best Fiction Sampler Ever 2014 - Howard Books
>>>Author: Allison Pataki,Beth K. Vogt,Betsy Duffey,Caryl McAdoo,Deeanne Gist,John Faubion,Karen Halvorsen Schreck,Karen Kingsbury,Laurie Myers,Lynne Gentry,Melanie Dobson,Rebecca Kanner,Serena B. Miller,Stephanie Landsem
>>>SECTION: xhtml/Healer_ch01.html
Lisbeth fished a pair of glasses out of her pocket
ry mucus membranes Ewww. Dry mucus membranes.

It sounds like there's more detail using the Calibre plugins? That makes the H2O more promising for me.