Transfer Notes from iBooks to Computer

Question

Level 1

34 points

Transfer Notes from iBooks to Computer

Does anyone know of a way to transfer highlights and notes from an ibook-purchased book from ibooks to my computer? I am an academic, and I really need to be able to see the material I've highlighted and use it on my machine (for papers, research, etc.).

This seems to be the major problem for ereaders when it comes to academic use.

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Jun 26, 2010 7:33 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 27, 2010 12:38 PM in response to John Huculak

they will likely make a version of iBooks for the Mac very soon.. But in the even that they don't we're stuck doing citations the old fashioned way.. looking at the "book" on the iPad and typing on your mac in whatever paper you're writing.. Not that big of a deal. You could also copy and past and email it to yourself from iPad, though it'd probably be easier to just do it the old fashioned way like I said.

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Answer 2

meitnik1

Level 1

8 points

Jun 27, 2010 3:55 PM in response to John Huculak

I too am waiting for this. Kindle already has this feature. Come on Apple show you still embrace your academic roots of 25 years ago! Give us scholars the tools to be more effective in our work, please!! And do it in the current iPad 1.0 not making us have to buy another device just to get work done. Have it be in iOs 4.1 this fall.

Thank you.

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Answer 3

birdhogg

Level 1

8 points

Sep 6, 2010 8:42 PM in response to meitnik1

As an academic, I put off buying ANY of the new iBooks because of this inability to easily transfer iBook notes to my Mac. When I finally broke down and purchased an iBook, I'm no longer sure that it was the right decision. The iBook interface is beautiful. But beautiful or not, I can't make much use of notes that remain buried in the pages of my iBooks. - birdhogg

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Answer 4

Sep 9, 2010 7:14 AM in response to John Huculak

I agree with birdhog. The interface is beautiful and is perfect for works of fiction, but any academic uses are thwarted due to inability to export notes/highlights. Would be nice to be able to keep the notes synced in the cloud with service like evernote. Please apple, update and release.

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Answer 5

Oct 27, 2010 8:51 AM in response to John Huculak

I need a way to search for keywords in my notes. I'm adding notes like crazy to some of the books in my collection, but if I can't search them, the functionality is fatally limited.

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Answer 6

meitnik1

Level 1

8 points

Dec 3, 2010 3:17 PM in response to Billy Baroo

An open letter to Apple,

For over 1000 years scholars have developed a workflow for doing research. Currently, iBooks and many other ereaders fail to support fully, correctly, or smartly this workflow. Why? It appears the publishers think every scholar is wanting to steal the whole book if allowed to manage/copy/export their highlighting/notes to anything outside of their walled garden of the book! Any good scholar knows if you are directly quoting more than 25% of the book, you are doing a poor job at scholarship. Come on Steve, show you stand with the crazy ones who study deeply books as part of their job/pleasure in life. Allow scholars to work smart not hard! And for the disabled, like me, show you care about us being able to do scholarship effectively using your cool tools. Thank you!

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Answer 7

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

Dec 3, 2010 4:54 PM in response to meitnik1

Post your feedback and suggestions here -> http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

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Answer 8

dberreby

Level 1

0 points

Feb 20, 2011 7:16 AM in response to John Huculak

Same problem here. Only Kindle seems to have solved it -- syncing between iPhone and Mac Kindle also syncs the notes, so whatever I have marked or noted while reading on the go can later be seen on the computer. Next step: I use Evernote's "screen capture" feature to get the note off the Kindle file and into wherever I need it. It's not as simple as copying text but it does work.

David

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Answer 9

Sam Katz1

Level 2

200 points

Jun 18, 2011 3:12 PM in response to dberreby

Nookstudy also has a .doc export for notes, and will sync books with the nookstudy app and ipad. (although you can't open textbooks on the ipad.)

--Sam

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Answer 10

Sam Katz1

Level 2

200 points

Jun 18, 2011 3:14 PM in response to Sam Katz1

It appears you should be able to use the Print function and something like printopia to get your stuff into various formats, like PDF on the computer.

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Answer 11

Jun 21, 2011 4:08 PM in response to birdhogg

i cannot agree more. Here is abrilliant thought...perhaps. If you read PDF books... make notations.. sync your idevice... your pdf's sync, and so do the notes...

also, copy paste is easy in a PDF. copy from PDF, past into anything.

I stopped buying iBooks, becuse of this long ago....now I find the book I want and buy the PDF version, drag it into itunes book area, and sync them to my iDevice.

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Answer 12

Jan 5, 2012 8:31 AM in response to John Huculak

If you go into the iBook's "Contents/Bookmarks/Notes" section (icon located just right of the Library button of the book your reading (table of contents icon) you can select the email icon on the far right when you in in the bookmarks and notes tabs. This will give you any notes you made (not highlighted text unfortunately - copy-right most likely) with the associated chapter and date of your note - as well as what you wrote in the note. You can then email this to yourself or hit the print button.

Not perfect, but it helps.

What I would like to know is how to synce my notes, highlights and bookmarks that I made in a book on my iPhone to the sme book on my iPad. Any idea? Syncing both to my computer doesn't do it.

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Answer 13

Sam Katz1

Level 2

200 points

Jan 9, 2012 9:32 AM in response to thomasfromdes moines

have you installed the latest update to ibooks on both devices? This is a supported feature. any book in the ibooks store will sync your notes between devices. Make sure sync bookmarks and sync collections are checked in settings-->ibooks.

It could just be the bookmarks that sync.

Either way both Kindle and esp. Nook with their fabulous nookstudy software have this feature.

--Sam

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Answer 14

Feb 3, 2012 10:57 AM in response to John Huculak

Just Found a way to export highlights and notes to your computer

if you have a mac.

Get iExplorer here

http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/

plug in your iOS device and use iExplorer to

look in the books file and drag the following files to your desktop.

iBooks.plist and iBooksData2.plist

and this app

https://github.com/lgoss007/BookmarkExtractor

put the files in the appropriate spot and you can get your highlights

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Answer 15

May 6, 2012 12:28 AM in response to Nathan005

It was really, REALLY useful the iExplorer software, not just for the bookmarks actually. But i can't understand how does the BookmarkExtractor works... Any help with that?

Thanks in advance.

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