# Share annotations of mobi book between Fire and Desktop?



## Christian (Feb 24, 2017)

Hi all,

I have a Kindle Fire (HDX 7"). I bought a mobi ebook (not on Amazon), and loaded it onto the Kindle. What I'd like to do is to add comments and highlights (not a problem) and then sync them between my laptop (Win 8.1) and the Kindle (big problem).

Is that possible, and what software do you need to do that?

Thanks,

Christian


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## barryem (Oct 19, 2010)

The problem is that you can send it to the Kindle as a doc file via Amazon but the current Kindle for PC can't read doc files.

What you can do is sync manually.  I read on my Kindle and in Moon+ reader on my phone and I go back and forth all the time.  The way I sync them is just pick a small phrase and do a text search for that phrase on whichever device to read on.  For example, in my current book I see the phrase "there was a shrinking".  I saw that on my phone and if I go to my Kindle and search for that phrase it'll usually take me right to it.  Sometimes that phrase occurs more than once but it gives me enough context to know which is the right one.  This rarely fails and with just a bit of practice it's actually faster than automatic syncing.

That doesn't help with notes and such but it makes syncing so easy I rarely bother with automatic syncing anymore.

Barry


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## Christian (Feb 24, 2017)

Hi Barry,

Thanks, but what I'm really interested in is syncing the highlights and annotations/comments. Happy to use any other software on my laptop; doesn't have to be Kindle. I'd even switch to PDF if necessary... I was hoping someone might have found a clever way involving dropbox, for example...


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## KingAl (Feb 21, 2011)

As far as I know, you cannot sync highlights from personal documents (anything not purchased from Amazon.) But I have been known to be wrong before...


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## tsemple (Apr 27, 2009)

The desktop apps can read personal documents that are on your local storage, but do not let you download them from your Kindle library. Any annotations you make on the local documents are local, and are not synced. 

Personal document annotations do sync between Kindle, Fire, Kindle for iOS and Kindle for Android for the docs in your Kindle library.

There are reading systems that will let you import ePub or PDF files into your library and sync the annotations on the devices those support. For example Google Play books has apps for iOS, Android and web browsers. 

If these are generic documents (not 'ebooks') then you might be better served using something like Evernote or OneNote.


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## Jill Nojack (Mar 7, 2014)

KingAl said:


> As far as I know, you cannot sync highlights from personal documents (anything not purchased from Amazon.) But I have been known to be wrong before...


KingAl is correct. With Kindle books there's https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights, but it doesn't let you view highlights from your documents, only your Amazon-purchased books. It is also really difficult to manuever once you've read a lot of books.

Amazon doesn't want you buying books from other vendors and is not going to make it more funcitonal to do so. That's why I'm slowly transitioning over to doing all my non Kindle Unlimited reading on my Aura H20 (a Kobo reader). I want to be able to access the hightlights on my PC, and with Kobo, those can be extracted and uploaded to http://www.kobonotes.com (a third party site). I love that I can access my notes on my PC now. I can stop buying all of my nonfiction in dead tree books.

Not doing a commercial for Kobo, but just sayin'...


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## tsemple (Apr 27, 2009)

The highlights for personal documents (stored in user's Kindle cloud, using send-to-kindle etc.) do sync. But the desktop apps cannot access personal documents in the cloud and those highlights. They will sync with Kindles, just not with Kindle apps that don't support personal documents (Windows and Mac OS).

If you side-load documents, the annotations won't get synced, of course.

If you want to get your annotations from personal-documents-in-the-cloud, that is (relatively recently) possible. But you have to use the Export Notes feature that exists in the Kindle apps for newer Fire tablets on Fire OS 5, Kindle for iOS, or Kindle for Android. When reading personal documents on a Kindle, the Export Notes feature is not enabled.

Kindle.amazon.com is still there, but it only works with amazon content and is a poor alternative to the export notes feature (supported in recent Kindles, Fires, iOS and Android).


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