How do I preserve or save my highlights and notes?

[Guest]

I have lost my highlights and notes twice now after closing a book in digital editions and then reopening it later.  Is this a common problem?  How do I save this work so that it is still there the next time I open up the book?

[Komsomolskaja]

Hello Levon,

you can find your notes in Digital Editions / Annotations. The notes files are *.annot.

Robert

[vw567]

Hello,

sorry for adding onto this old thread - just wondering if it's possible to apply an annotation file to a book after redownloading? Most of the books from my university library can only be downloaded for a couple of days so that I then have to redownload them. I would like to preserve the comments/highlights from the first version and apply them to the newly downloaded book if possible.

Many thanks!

Viola

[Cristina5FDC · Accepted solution]

Hi there! I was in a similar situation and 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 🙂

[NIC98]

Thank you for saving a week´s workload and subsequently my day.

Another annotation 😉

Make sure to download the new version of the book in the same file format (epub/pdf) or else it won´t work. 

[Mary34470900v39r]

Thank you so much @Cristina5FDC , this saved me a whole month's work!!  🙂 

Hey, I notice some people talking about 'trying to open’ the ".annot" file ......
I didn't try to actually open the ".annot" file, instead I right-clicked the ".annot" file to rename it as per  @Cristina5FDC who, I think, was talking about opening the book file (the ".epub file) rather than the ".annot" file.

[chrisa19414734]

Thanks Christina - you're very helpful!

[N5DC7]

As you see in several of the replies below (including this one), it is not always possible to open the .annot file. For me, my Mac says there is no application that can open a .annot file (including ADE). How can we use the .annot file to re-apply previously made highlights to a document when annotations disappear?

[Lonneke28612603t0ja]

I would also like to know this, my highlights and notes disappeared as well.

[michaelac50830831]

Having the same problem on mac. 

[bxwu2013]

Hello,

I have the save question. How could I preserve the note and highlight on my Adobe digital book?

[bxwu2013]

Hello,

Once I open my Adobe Digital Edition Ebook, how could I also open *.annot file which I assume that my old highligh and note are saved?

[Ronni1]

Sorry this is not a reply but I do not see how to post. I would just like Adobe to understand the extent of this ridiculous problem. I too have just lost a day's worth of highlights. Furious and disgusted. 

[jenks34]

I'm in the same position. I had a few days of highlights that have to be submitted for my class that are completely gone. Because we run on block schedule, the information I lost is equivalent to weeks of work. It is pointless to have a highlight function if those highlights are not going to be saved. 

[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 🙂

[dingoball]

You get a million cool points from me. Thanks for taking the time to help everyone out.

[Mette Viuff387622338wu8]

Sorry to latch on to your post, 

11 Years later this is still an issue... 

I bought a book so unfortunately i cannot use the trick 'keeping the old copy'... My only copy has been altered, deleting so much work... 

Why has this issue not been fixed...?