How can I export or backup highlights and annotations that I've made in my ebooks using ADE2?

[oblador-I9hgZA]

Hi,

I've made many annotations and I've highlighted a lot of paragraphs in my ebooks using ADE2.

Now I need to format my PC and reinstall Windows.

How can I export or backup my highlights and annotations so that I can keep them?

I only want to keep that information with me. How can I do it?

Thanks.

[sjpt]

You will find most of the data under   C:\Users\<username>\Documents\My Digital Editions

If you back that up (and its subdirectories) and restore it to the new Windows installation, you should get everything back as it was before.

The annotations are under C:\Users\<username>\Documents\My Digital Editions\Annotations

If at all possible, backup your entire drive before reformat/reinstall;

there may well be other things you wished you had backed up and don't think of till too late.

[oblador-I9hgZA]

Thanks for helping, but I hope Adobe finds a better solution for this situation. There should be an option to store highlights and annotations and export or backup them up.

[sjpt · Accepted solution]

I agree it would be good to have cloud managment and storage of the books etc you use under ADE, but I doubt Adobe will provide it.

Unfortunately, Adobe only provides very limited support for ADE and ADE related infrastructure:  I suspect just enough to be able to get money from vendors for use of Adobe DRM.  No online management of authorized devices, no proper product test (as shown by the huge number of bugs in ADE2.0), ....

If you are a bit technical and willing to play around a little, you could probably get the effect you want.

Use some cloud sync mechanism that allows you to specify your own folders.

Or, use something like Dropbox, and use a directory junction or symbolic link to make the Digital Editions directory part of your Dropbox.

OK, it's a hack, but as I say, you'll probably never get it if you wait for Adobe.

[oblador-I9hgZA]

Thanks, sjpt, that's exactly what I'm going to do. The cloud solution seems to be the only efficient workaround.

[danielt48826074]

So, I found the annotations files but how do I import back into the book?  The problem is, I am a reference librarian and a students wants to check out a book and make notes.  He only gets that book for 3 weeks and wants to check it back out but keep his notes. I've downloaded a book from EbscoHost, made notes and then returned the book. Checked out the same book again, but couldn't import the annotations.  There just isn't an option to import. I can't even get the option to open the .annot files with Adobe Digital Editions. 

[spn1309]

There isn't any option to import the annotations, but one thing that I found useful, is to copy the .annot file to some other location and then change the file extension to .txt. You can find all your annotations there. 

It is a crude way of exporting your annotations, there's no fancy formatting in it, in fact there is html formatting data in the file, but for the time being its easier to simply convert the file. 

[Cristina5FDC]

Hi there! I created an account just to be able to answer. I found something that worked for me: 

- When the "lending" of the book expires, DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING. Just leave it on your library, like a zombie. 

- Download the book again (in my case, borrow it again from my university library). Now you should have two versions of the same book in your ADE library: the old expired one and the fresh new one. 

- Open the new version, highlight just anything and close it again. 

- Go to C:\Users\<username>\OneDrive\Documentos\My Digital Editions\Annotations (or something similar on your PC). 

- Find the ".annot" documents with the title of your book. There should be two, in my case "Risikogesellschaft" for the old version and "Risikogesellschaft-1" for the new version. 

- Replace the title of the new version to just anything (I didn't dare to delete it, you possibly could), and replace the title of the old version with the title of the new version (in my case, "Risikogesellschaft" becomes "Risikogesellschaft-1"). 

- Open the new version of the book on Adobe Digital Editions and check if the highlights and annotations are there. 

I really really hope this works! And I hope I didn't make any mistakes in the instructions 🙂

[angelo_porciuncula]

Thanks! This worked! Now, we still have to figure out how to export the highlighted text. Any ideas? Because the .annot file is almost gibberish.

[robs52109205]

It's xml, convert to csv and you can open in Excel

https://onlinexmltools.com/convert-xml-to-csv

[Marcelina0D4D]

Thank you so much, this saved my precious notes after I mistakenly removed a book from my ADE library!

[default5ebeguakc1m4]

How do I copy and paste from an eBook? I am using ADE 4.5. Tx. Joe