Get all the highlights and notes from your Kindle

All Kindle highlights, notes and bookmarks are stored in My Clippings.txt file in documents folder. The file is easily accessible from the home screen, but quite messy and not that easy to manipulate. Amazon does not offer an easy way to extract or share these. You can connect the Kindle to a computer via USB and copy the file and then open it in any text editor. Still it is very uncomfortable if you have a lot of highlights and full articles. Fortunately there is solution to the My Clippings issue.

• If you read only books from Amazon you can access your highlights at https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights But even this way your notes are from from being in good order. The downloadable Kindle application also has such severe limitations and lacks exporting functions.

• If you are like me, reading a lot of web articles, personal documents and non Amazon books you are completely on your own to find a solution. The best option is without doubt ClippingsConverter service. While it has some shortcomings this tool is by far the best way to liberate your clippings and even lets you export them Excel, Word, PDF and even Evernote. You need to register with your email, but it is worth. No easy way to share your clippings directly, but it is still the best free tool out there and I do not find any real bugs.

• Another good free online option is Clipper. It it is even more basic and straightforward and does not require registration. It even lets you grab a permanent link to share the My Clippings content, but in much much friendlier order. Unfortunately this tool has problems with non-English characters.

• People who prefer stand alone applications or are more concerned of their privacy online could check DaleyKlippings. I have not really worked with this one as ClippingsConverter serves all my humble needs and I do not feel like downloading some 17 MB app just to read a plain text file.

• There is also an easy way to convert the Kindle highlights to academic citations online. This script does the job, but as most e-books are provided without proper pages it is far from universal solution. Citing some kindle location is not that credible

If somebody is aware of a better free online Kindle clippings applications, please share your wisdom. And in case there are curious ones willing to check some of the witty highlights from my Kindle, you are welcome.