Writer Wednesday: Loading a Word Document onto a Kindle
Updated on 4/9/2019
You may be wondering what this has to do with Writer Wednesday. Well, let’s say you are part of a Writing Critique Group. Now, as a member of the group, you need to read and critique others’ manuscripts. Sometimes those manuscripts can be lengthy. Printing that manuscript and then toting it about can become a bit unwieldy. Enter the handy dandy portable and lightweight Kindle or Kindle App on your smartphone.
This is exactly how I recently reviewed a fellow writer’s chapter book. It is very easily accomplished via either email or USB.
Loading a Document to a Kindle Via Email:
- Open Amazon and log in to your account.
- Click on your My Account | Your Content & Devices.
- Click on Preferences.
- Navigate down to Personal Document Settings and scroll down to Send-to-Kindle E-Mail Settings.
(Obviously I have some old things listed here that I really need to clean up!) - Ensure that your email address is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List. Documents can only be sent to your Kindle devices or apps from e-mail addresses included on this list. This is to prevent spam!
- Create an email with the proper email address for the device to which you are sending it.
- Attach the desired document to the email and send. The document will appear in the library of the device or app to which you sent it.
Note: If you do not have wireless internet where you are, use the other method, Loading a Document to a Kindle Via USB.
Caution: You can add notes, highlights, and bookmarks to the document you uploaded, but, at present, there is no way to extract the marked up document from the Kindle. This would be useful for reading purposes only. From some smartphones, such as an iPhone, you may be able to take screen captures of the highlight or notes and use those, but certainly you can see the limitations of that.
Loading a Document to a Kindle Via USB:
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Locate the folder which contains the document you wish to load onto your Kindle.
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Connect your device to your computer with the USB cable. Your device will appear in the same location on your computer that external USB drives appear. In the case of a Windows machine, it will appear in the My Computer folder.
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Open the Kindle folder, and then open the Documents folder.
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Locate the document file on your computer, and then drag and drop the file into the Documents folder on your Kindle.
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Safely disconnect your device from your computer once the transfer is complete.
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Your personal document will appear on the home screen of your Kindle eReader.
Caution: You can add notes, highlights, and bookmarks to the document you uploaded, but, at present, there is no way to extract the marked up document from the Kindle. This would be useful for reading purposes only. From some smartphones, such as an iPhone, you may be able to take screen captures of the highlight or notes and use those, but certainly you can see the limitations of that.
Supported File Types include:
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Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX)
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RTF (.RTF)
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HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
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PDF (.PDF)
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Kindle Format (.MOBI, .AZW)
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JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
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GIF (.GIF)
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PNG (.PNG)
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BMP (.BMP)
A Note about PDFs
PDFs can be converted to the Kindle format so you can take advantage of functionality such as variable font size, annotations, and Whispersync.
To have a document converted to Kindle format (.azw), the subject line should be “convert” when e-mailing a personal document to your Send-to-Kindle address.
Amazon’s Kindle Personal Documents Service Help
Need more help? Go here!
