Export Notes from iBooks?

Question

Level 1

29 points

Export Notes from iBooks?

I have just recently started to use iBooks more heavily to take notes and highlights, but I cannot figure out how to export the notes taken? If there is a way to do this, or a workaround, I would appreciate some help... if there isn't, this is a major feature that needs to be added to iBooks, one that Kindle long since made available (even though taking notes on a Kindle is about impossible, at least you can get them). Thanks, Scott

MacBookPro5,1, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Jun 30, 2010 11:00 AM

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Answer 1

scottfillmer Author

Level 1

29 points

Jul 4, 2011 7:03 AM in response to scottfillmer

bump...

too bad that here we are more than a whole year later after i asked this question and we still can't do what the Kindle app seems to do natively. Someone at Apple please tell me this is going to change with iCloud?

This is such a simple feature request. Being able to access our notes and highlights via a website just like Amazon does it will solve these problems, at least for me.

I will say, since I can't export or view notes and highlights via a website, I have bought tons of books for my Kindle app and none for iBooks since I posted this. I still have the one book in iBooks that i read every day and would like to get all my notes and highlights out of, but i will not buy any new content for iBooks until this is added, something that should have been added from the start. Hope Apple is listening.

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Answer 2

mfubib

Level 1

8 points

Nov 14, 2011 5:39 AM in response to scottfillmer

iCloud will sync your notes, highlights and bookmarks between devices. However I am not aware of any way to read ePubs via iTunes and view these - which is a pity. However you can export multiple notes via email.

I just added half a dozen notes to an ePub file, navigated to the Bookmarks section next to the Table of Contents, hit the share button in the top right and selected email.

The email is in a easy to read format and includes all notes, however it does omit highlights & bookmarks. To workaround this I simply copied the text I wanted to highlight ... and pasted it in the note (:

It appears Apple are listening.

Edit: I tested this on an iPad 2 & an iPhone 4, both running iOS5 with the latest version of iBooks.

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Answer 3

Nov 19, 2011 8:30 PM in response to scottfillmer

Don't give too much credit to Amazon. They have everything they own on lockdown. If you highlight and/or note any books/documents on your Kindle that you didn't purchase from Amazon, then you can't view those highlights/notes on anything other than your Kindle. They're also not backed up on the amazon cloud.

So, for people who don't appreciate being forced to gather all their ebooks from one place (I'm about to make some people happy), give this a try...

http://www.klippingskollector.com/

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Answer 4

meitnik1

Level 1

8 points

Dec 1, 2011 2:32 PM in response to michaelta

Wow, klippingsKollector...now thats what Apple should have done by now for ibooks.

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Answer 5

Feb 3, 2012 10:47 AM in response to meitnik1

Just Found a way to accomplish this

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 6

meitnik

Level 1

8 points

Feb 3, 2012 11:12 AM in response to Nathan005

Nathan, how about a 10.6.8 version too! ;-) Thank you!!

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Answer 7

Feb 3, 2012 11:24 AM in response to meitnik

if you have xcode you could grab the source and try to compile it for 10.6

I don't have a 10.6 machine to test on, but I'll try to recomplie it when I get time

- let me know if it works when its updated on gitHub.

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Answer 8

Feb 3, 2012 12:40 PM in response to meitnik

so... 10.6 doesn't support ARC so it would be more work than recompiling.

I'm not going to invest the time - watch the gitHub some other dev may feel your pain.

I had an html Scipt that was doing somethign similar - I abandonded this early - I think it wasn't returning all the strings but you can have it.

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
          function loadXMLDoc(dname)
          {
          if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
            {
            xhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
            }
          else
            {
            xhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
            }
          xhttp.open("GET",dname,false);
          xhttp.send();
          return xhttp.responseXML;
          }
</script>
</head>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
xmlDoc=loadXMLDoc("iBooksData2.plist");


x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("string");
for (i=0;i<x.length;i++)
  { 
  document.write(x[i].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
  document.write("<br />");
  }


</script>


</body>
</html>

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Answer 9

May 13, 2012 4:23 PM in response to scottfillmer

check out http://parthiv777.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/extracting-highlights-from-ibooks-ipa d-or-iphone-via-online-tool/ , there is online tool where u can upload your boomarks data file so it will extract your highlights and make a ebook for you to read back in iBooks

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Answer 10

Sep 3, 2012 5:04 AM in response to mfubib

mfubib wrote:

iCloud will sync your notes, highlights and bookmarks between devices. However I am not aware of any way to read ePubs via iTunes and view these - which is a pity. However you can export multiple notes via email.

I just added half a dozen notes to an ePub file, navigated to the Bookmarks section next to the Table of Contents, hit the share button in the top right and selected email.

The email is in a easy to read format and includes all notes, however it does omit highlights & bookmarks. To workaround this I simply copied the text I wanted to highlight ... and pasted it in the note (:

It appears Apple are listening.

How does this work for you? Or does it only work for books purchased via iBooks, which for people in many countries is not an option at all because iBooks predominantly works only in US, Canada and UK?

I just tried exporting over 200 notes from a book, and the email had no line at all. Nothing apart from the title of the book. What gives?

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Answer 11

Nov 24, 2012 1:49 PM in response to scottfillmer

I don't know if iBooks has changed since this was originally posted, but I just found how to send notes and highlights. In the Notes section, hit the Share Arrow, Edit, Select All, and then email it. Works like a dream.

And this is on an iPhone 4 with iOS 6. iCloud sync had worked perfectly before, but this was from a book that my wife wrote that I imported to iBooks myself so that seemed to nullify the iCloud syncing.

Hope that helps some.

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Answer 12

Nov 24, 2012 9:08 PM in response to mikesoderstrom

In the Notes section, hit the Share Arrow, Edit, Select All, and then email it. Works like a dream.

Wow that is new, and awesome - does more than the app too (Highlight Color)

I don't think I would have found it under "edit" notes

thank you very much

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Answer 13

Nov 25, 2012 5:10 AM in response to Nathan005

I know...it doesn't make any sense why they have it under Edit. I didn't think to check there at first either.

Glad I could help.

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Answer 14

NitroGuy

Level 1

0 points

Feb 25, 2013 2:39 PM in response to scottfillmer

Try Digested! Works very well for me, extracts all the highlights into one PDF with one click! "Digested, quickly import bookmarks and notes from iBooks on iPhone, iPod, iPad export to PDF and Evernote...".

No need to use mail or even Internet, imports everything from both ePub and PDF.

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Answer 15

cabrian

Level 1

0 points

Jul 30, 2013 10:19 AM in response to Nathan005

I'm having a problem with this - I export to my Gmail account and it shows up with proper highlighting if I read the mail on my iPad or iPhone. But if I read the same message in the web version of Gmail no highlighting is present. I also shared another book's notes to my work account and no highlighting there either. Anyone else experiencing this?

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