How to export Kindle highlights and notes, book by book

You can export Kindle highlights and notes one book at a time, from a Kindle e-reader or the Kindle app: the export emails you the book's notebook as a PDF or as flashcards. This guide covers the steps for each, a file some e-readers keep with every highlight in it, how to get either into Excel with a row per highlight, and why an export can leave some highlights out.

Each book keeps its own notebook: the list of everything you highlighted and noted in it. That is what the export sends. On a Kindle e-reader or the Kindle iOS app:

1. Open the book and tap the Library icon (the book shape) in the top menu. The list of your notes and highlights opens.
2. Tap the Share icon (a box with an arrow).
3. Tap Export, to email it as a PDF or as flashcards.
4. Type your email address and tap Send.

If the email doesn't arrive within a few minutes, check your spam folder and the address you typed.

In the Kindle Android app, the menus differ: open the book and tap the middle of the screen to show the toolbar, tap the Notes icon (a piece of paper), tap Share, and choose Export notebook, or Make flashcards. Either way, the export is one book at a time, so for a whole shelf you repeat it per book.

If your Amazon and Goodreads accounts are linked, Goodreads can show your Kindle notes and highlights too: Goodreads offers it to members in the U.S., Ireland, Canada, Australia and India. Our guide to the Goodreads export library covers the rest of your reading record.

If you connect a Kindle e-reader to a computer with a USB cable and its documents folder holds a file called My Clippings.txt, that file is a plain-text record of the highlights and notes made on that device, across books. Copy it to your computer before you open it, so the original stays as it was. If its clippings are separated by a line of equals signs, that separator is what makes the file easy to fold into rows below.

From the PDF export: open it, select the highlights from the first to the last, copy, and paste into an empty sheet as plain text. If each highlight comes with a line for its location, you get a long column alternating between the two.

From My Clippings.txt: open it in a text editor, copy everything, and paste into column A. If the separator is a line of ten equals signs, give each line the number of the clipping it belongs to by putting this in B1 and filling it down:

=COUNTIF($A$1:A1, "==========")

Every line of one clipping now shares a number. Filter out the separator lines and the blank ones, and look at what is left for one clipping, typically a line naming the book, a line of details and the text. The fold-back method for lists that paste as one column, in our guide to exporting a list from any site, turns those three lines into three columns: Book, Details and Highlight. Sort by Book and you have every highlight of a book together.

If your export or your notebook says some highlights were hidden or cut short because of an export limit, the export is following a limit on how much of that book can be exported, not failing. It isn't a setting on your side, and there's nothing to fix in your file. We couldn't find Amazon's own page on how the limit works, so we won't guess at its size; the highlights the notice names are the ones the export won't include.

Tabless is a browser extension that builds what you ask for from the sites you allow; nothing is typed or submitted without your OK. It isn't open yet. An export like this one is the kind of job we're building it for: asking in plain words for "my highlights from this book, with the location of each", and getting it as a CSV or XLSX file.

It's designed to read through the session your browser already has, so there are no API keys or passwords to hand over, and to ask before it reads each site. It's for lists you're entitled to see, for your own work, and the site's own rules still apply, a book's export limit included. You sign in to Tabless with a Wix account.

Yes, if you link your Amazon and Goodreads accounts and you are in a country where Goodreads offers Kindle Notes & Highlights: the U.S., Ireland, Canada, Australia or India. Elsewhere, export them from your Kindle or the app as above.

Give it a few minutes, then check your spam folder and the email address you typed when you sent it. Send it again from the book if it still has not arrived.

Not yet. Tabless isn't open, and exports like this one are among the jobs we're building it for. Join the waitlist, and we'll let you know when you can try Tabless.