# sending a pdf to kindle email address: server says file too large



## inezb (Sep 12, 2011)

Hi i am new to kindle and all it can do. i have some books on my Mac in pdf and i have tried to send one to my kindle email address which, i understand, will mean it will convert it to a kindle-friendly format and send it to my kindle. However my server won't send the file saying it is too large to send. Apparently, i find,  there is converting software available but which should i use, how easy is it (i have a brain formed in a pre tech era) and assuming no prior knowledge, where is there a guide for dummies? thank you


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

First thing to understand: PDF's are not a good format for viewing on a Kindle. This is because the pages in the PDF are laid out exactly as they are in the real book, which means that the book cannot be re-flowed (the words moved around) on the Kindle screen and you cannot change font sizes etc. A lot of the times, PDFs end up too small to comfortably read on the Kindle.

Converting the PDF can sometimes help, but it doesn't necessarily work very well, for a number of reasons including that all the page elements (headers, footers, page numbers etc) are hard coded within the PDF and therefore end up in the final book.

So it's worth trying to see if you can get the books in any other format - even something like a Microsoft Word document is better because it can be reflowed.

OK, if you're still reading now I'll assume you have no choice, PDF or nothing, and accept that it isn't going to be perfect. You then have three choices:

1) Put the PDF on the Kindle and view it natively: do this with the USB cable, copy the PDF into the "documents" folder on your Kindle. You should then be able to view it on your Kindle; the "Aa" button has different options with a PDF, try them, they may help - sometimes turning it sideways works better!

2) Email the PDF to your kindle account with "Convert" in the title (if you don't put "Convert" then PDF's are sent without conversion: it sounds like you have problems with this due to the size of the books: the problem sounds like it is your outgoing email rather than Amazon that is complaining, you could try an alternative email such as Gmail and see if that will allow larger attachments.

3) Use conversion software on your Mac. Calibre is the most popular, but it is much more than conversion and so can be quite daunting at first: think of it like a bookshelf, you import all your books into it, setting author and title (and metadata such as cover etc) as you go, then you can pick a book and ask it to convert it. For a Kindle you want to convert to MOBI format. If you have your Kindle plugged in, you will get a button "send to device" which will automatically copy the book to your Kindle.

There are other conversion packages, although I couldn't advise which of them would work well on a Mac.

Hope this helps, see how you get on and post back if you have any specific problems.


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