Saving & Accessing an EPUB that someone has sent you in an iMessage on iPhone or iPad

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Level 1

9 points

Saving & Accessing an EPUB that someone has sent you in an iMessage on iPhone or iPad

When a friend sends me an EPUB file in iMessages as an attachment, I cannot read or save it on ios15 or iPadOS15 and I need to boot up my MBP to read the iMessage on there in order to open or save the EPUB attachment.

Why? Both my iPhone and iPad have books on and have iCloud on - how come I can only forward the attachment on both these devices and not save it or open it right away in Books? Both these devices have Books on and I want to read the EPUB on these devices and not have to go to the mac and save it to iCloud there to open it on my iPad or iPhone!

This inability to open EPUBs in phone and tablet also existed in ios14.

Is this by design or a bug? Either way it’s certainly a limitation and I would like it rectified .. how can I do this? thanks!

iPhone 12

Posted on Sep 20, 2021 8:58 PM

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Answer 1

muguy

Level 10

92,702 points

Sep 21, 2021 6:22 PM in response to crispinb

DRM. Sorry that was autocorrect.

Long-press

Select Copy

then navigate to the Files app and go to Browse > On my iphone

long press on the blank space under the search bar

Select paste

You can now open the epub from this location and it will open in iBooks

Not sure why it's wonky but the workaround works

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Answer 2

muguy

Level 10

92,702 points

Sep 20, 2021 9:03 PM in response to crispinb

Long-press the file.

Select open in ... books

It may be that the particular pub has dim attached and cannot be opened.

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Answer 3

crispinb Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 21, 2021 6:18 PM in response to muguy

Hi, thanks but what do you mean by dim? this is what I get when I long press on an iPhone or iPad? No option to open or even save - just copy or forward! Yet on iMessage on mac I can open it or just drag it to the desktop or even to my iCloud Drive? (Where it will open fine on iPhone or iPad). This doesn’t make sense - if it can be done on a mac and even attached and forwarded on an iPhone / iPad, then why can’t it be opened or saved on mobile devices??

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Answer 4

crispinb Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 21, 2021 6:49 PM in response to muguy

Genius! Thank you! This worked - agreed very wonky and totally nonsensical as this an ePub without DRM yet still requires doing all this to be able to read but at least it works!

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Saving & Accessing an EPUB that someone has sent you in an iMessage on iPhone or iPad

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