Kindle Tips

ideal for editors, agents, publishers, and other heavy personal document readers.

Importing “My Clippings”

with 9 comments

Connect your kindle to your PC or Mac, using the USB cable.

Look in Kindle/Documents for the file “My Clippings.txt” as shown here.Import My Clippings
Copy this file to your computer — somewhere that you know you’ll find it later.
Open this file:What the file looks like, straight from the kindle

Copy all the text in the file (in notepad, use Control-A and then Control-C).

Open a new document in Microsoft word, and paste the copied text. (Control-V) Pasting the text into a word document

Select the Edit Menu/Replace

Edit Menu - Replace

Replace “| ” with “^p” (no quotes)
Replace All.Replace All \

Repeat the above: Edit Menu/Replace. Replace “Loc.” with “^pLoc“.

Select all the text. (Control-A)

Go to the Table Menu/Convert Text to Table,

Convert Text to Table menu

When that window opens, choose 7 columns, separate text at paragraph mark

MS Word Window to Convert Text to Table

Go to your Edit Menu/Replace again, and replace “added on “ with nothing — clear that second entry.

Replace \

Select the entire column with ========== in it,

Select column 1

right click, and choose “delete column.” Delete Column with \

Repeat delete column for the blank column, if you like.

Go to your Table menu again, and select Table menu/Sort:  Sort in Table

The Sort menu window

When the window comes up, sort FIRST by column 1 & SECOND column 3

Adjust your column width as desired — and you should have a complete table, sorted by manuscript and location within the manuscript!
You should now have a completed and sorted table!

(In the coming weeks, i’ll write a macro for MS Word 2003 — feel free to email me if you want a copy.)

Written by Shana

May 7, 2008 at 4:04 pm

9 Responses

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  1. [...] Importing “My Clippings” – Kindle Tips [...]

  2. Good job tackling a useful task. When you get the Word 2003 macro done I’d appreciate a copy. Thanks in advance.
    John

    John Leathers

    August 14, 2008 at 7:16 am

  3. I must be doing something wrong or missing a vital step. When I get to the part of where you delete the column with =============== in it, there is more than one column and further more the ========== appears with other text in text in some columns…

    Any ideas?

    Has your word macro come out yet?

    best regards,

    D

    David Magellan Horth

    August 18, 2008 at 3:51 pm

  4. I’ve had the same problem — it happens when you’ve got a carriage return (^p) inside the comment itself.
    i usually page down the whole table as soon as i create it, note if and where it happened, hit Undo (Ctrl-Z), delete that carriage return, and then remake the table.

    Sorry — I can’t seem to make the macro work right yet!

    I really wish they’d come up with a better way of doing this…

    Shana

    August 22, 2008 at 10:30 am

  5. I developed a work-around using an old scripting routine I used 15 years ago, substituting &&& for ^p, and then re-inserting as required.

    I also changed the bit with the | to search for “| Added” since the washington post clippings included the “|” character.

    I am including the VBA macro code here for any that are interested.
    ====

    Sub my_Clippings()

    ‘ my_Clippings Macro


    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “^p^p”
    .Replacement.Text = “”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Application.WindowState = wdWindowStateMinimize
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “^p^p”
    .Replacement.Text = “”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Application.WindowState = wdWindowStateNormal
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “^p^p”
    .Replacement.Text = “&&&”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “^p===”
    .Replacement.Text = “&&&===”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “^p-”
    .Replacement.Text = “&&&-”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “===^p”
    .Replacement.Text = “===&&&”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “^p”
    .Replacement.Text = ” ”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “Loc.”
    .Replacement.Text = ” &&&Loc.”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “| Added ”
    .Replacement.Text = ” &&& Added ”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “&&&”
    .Replacement.Text = “^p”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    Selection.WholeStory
    WordBasic.TextToTable ConvertFrom:=0, NumColumns:=6, NumRows:=475, _
    InitialColWidth:=wdAutoPosition, Format:=0, Apply:=1184, AutoFit:=0, _
    SetDefault:=0, Word8:=0, Style:=”Table Grid”
    Application.WindowState = wdWindowStateMinimize
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “&&&”
    .Replacement.Text = “^p”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindAsk
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Application.WindowState = wdWindowStateNormal
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
    .Text = “Added on”
    .Replacement.Text = “”
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindAsk
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    End Sub

    Steve

    November 30, 2008 at 4:47 pm

  6. [...] a “sort-able” document.  In so doing, I found a blog where the author went through the steps necessary to import the file to a Word table.  So far, so good.  Unfortunately, there was room for [...]

  7. Greetings. I just wanted you to know, I created the macro, and have a couple little tricks that cleared up the problems mentioned above (and a few others, as well.)

    Feel free to come and grab the VBA code. I would love it though if you would leave a comment and tell me what you think.

    (I will be cleaning up the code, once the semester is over. Right now it is simply “recorder” code, but I can clean it up a bit.)

    Steve

    Steve

    December 6, 2008 at 7:23 pm

    • Thanks for this, Steve. I’d be quite grateful if you’d help put together a description of how to use this VBA code – i’m not that familiar with it.

      Shana

      December 19, 2008 at 4:19 pm

  8. Thank you so much for this. I took some notes which spaned a page, I now know to close my highlight before the page ends and start on new one on the next page.

    Thanks again.

    Suzanne

    April 11, 2009 at 11:24 pm


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