# Converting PDF files for e-readers...
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [October 1, 2012, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394 "2012-10-01T15:19:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2012, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/1 "2012-10-01T15:19:47Z")
Namely- How does one convert a PDF file so it can be read like an iBooks or Kindle file? Thanks!
---
### Author:  [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2012, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/2 "2012-10-01T15:30:06Z")
Use this —\> [http://calibre-ebook.com/](http://calibre-ebook.com/)
---
### Author:  [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2012, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/3 "2012-10-01T15:31:53Z")
For kindle, you email it to your Kindle’s address with the word “convert” in the subject line. it will drop to your kindle automatically in Kindle format.
Your kindle’s email address is here:
Menu-\>settings-\>device options-\>Personalize your kindle-\> send-to-kindle email
You have to set any email you wish to send docs FROM as a permitted email address in your Amazon account. You only have to do this once, and you can designate as many permitted email addresses as you want. But it will reject emails from any source other than the permitted emails you listed.
If you email a pdf without “convert” in the subject line, your kindle can still read it, but it might not display very well and you can’t change the width, font size, etc. This is fine for some docs, not so good for others.
---
### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2012, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/4 "2012-10-01T16:13:13Z")
Note that, whatever method you use ( **Duckster** ’s or **Hello Again** ’s), the results may or may not be satisfactory. [Calibre’s help doc](http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/conversion.html#format-specific-tips) describes the difficulties:
> [@](#):
>
> PDF documents are one of the worst formats to convert from. They are a fixed page size and text placement format. Meaning, it is very difficult to determine where one paragraph ends and another begins. calibre will try to unwrap paragraphs using a configurable, Line Un-Wrapping Factor. This is a scale used to determine the length at which a line should be unwrapped. Valid values are a decimal between 0 and 1. The default is 0.45, just under the median line length. Lower this value to include more text in the unwrapping. Increase to include less. You can adjust this value in the conversion settings under PDF Input.
>
> Also, they often have headers and footers as part of the document that will become included with the text. Use the Search and Replace panel to remove headers and footers to mitigate this issue. If the headers and footers are not removed from the text it can throw off the paragraph unwrapping. To learn how to use the header and footer removal options, read All about using regular expressions in calibre.
>
> Some limitations of PDF input are:
>
> •Complex, multi-column, and image based documents are not supported.
> •Extraction of vector images and tables from within the document is also not supported.
> •Some PDFs use special glyphs to represent ll or ff or fi, etc. Conversion of these may or may not work depending on just how they are represented internally in the PDF.
> •Links and Tables of Contents are not supported
> •PDFs that use embedded non-unicode fonts to represent non-English characters will result in garbled output for those characters
> •Some PDFs are made up of photographs of the page with OCRed text behind them. In such cases calibre uses the OCRed text, which can be very different from what you see when you view the PDF file
>
> To re-iterate PDF is a **really, really bad format** to use as input. If you absolutely must use PDF, then be prepared for an output ranging anywhere from decent to unusable, depending on the input PDF.
---
### Author:  [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2012, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/5 "2012-10-01T19:36:00Z")
Kindle these days can read .pdfs natively. As for iBooks, there are multiple apps for reading .pdf files on the iPad. I use one called GoodReader, which works beautifully.
---
### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2012, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/6 "2012-10-01T19:44:54Z")
I have an older Kindle (1 year old) and it does not play well with PDF. You can read, but if the original page layout (i.e. computer manuals) was for a large page, the text is too small to be readable to the older eye, or you use the zoom and scroll back and forth for each line.
As mentioned above, it is not that handy with pictures.
I’ve used Calibre for text conversion, then emailed the MOBI to my Kindle ID, and it’s worked pretty good.
---
### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2012, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/7 "2012-10-01T21:36:39Z")
I am still trying to decide which e-reader to buy. I am mainly concerned with putting my own papers on, but I am willing to compile them in a narrower format to fit. What I really want to be able to do is read them sideways since then the columns (after I remove the margins) can now be read at their design size (about 6 inches). Reflowing is a no-no; math cannot survive reflowing. Some e-readers can and some (the one I was most interested in buying) cannot use text sideways.
---
### Author:  [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2012, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/8 "2012-10-02T07:31:26Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#):
>
> I am still trying to decide which e-reader to buy. I am mainly concerned with putting my own papers on, but I am willing to compile them in a narrower format to fit. What I really want to be able to do is read them sideways since then the columns (after I remove the margins) can now be read at their design size (about 6 inches). Reflowing is a no-no; math cannot survive reflowing. Some e-readers can and some (the one I was most interested in buying) cannot use text sideways.
Is e-ink very important to you?
If not, consider a regular tablet like the [Nexus 7](https://www.google.com/nexus/#/7). _Much_ easier formatting, though not quite as easy on the eyes. At $200, it’s not that much more than a Kindle and you can do a lot more with it… just not read as well.
I have both a Kindle Touch (which I absolutely love) and a Nexus 7 (which I like a lot). I’m trying to get rid of one of them right now and although the reading experience on the Kindle is much nicer, the Nexus is beginning to win me over just because it’s soooo much faster, I don’t have to worry about conversion issues as much, and pictures actually display in color and can be zoomed, etc. Might warrant consideration.
---
### Author:  [@Bad\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bad_Astronaut)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2012, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/9 "2012-10-02T19:35:28Z")
The best PDF conversion software I have used is ABBYY Finereader. It produces significantly better results than Calibre or the Kindle email service. The latest version (11) has an ebook output mode (produces .epub files and handles images intelligently).
It’s OCR software (eg. for scanning printed documents and converting to text) but it still outperforms other programs for PDFs with the text embedded.
---
### Author:  [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2012, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/10 "2012-10-02T21:43:29Z")
So my friend has Calibre 8.62 & she needs to know how to get her books from there onto her iTunes. She was able to drag & drop but it’s not working in this case. She is trying to update the Calibre so I can help her step by step but it’s not working for her.
---
### Author:  [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2012, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/11 "2012-10-02T22:17:34Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#):
>
> What I really want to be able to do is read them sideways since then the columns (after I remove the margins) can now be read at their design size (about 6 inches).
My Sony (PRS-505) will do this. Even though it’s just a 6 inch display it’s still readable, more or less.
---
### Author:  [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2012, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/12 "2012-10-02T22:48:42Z")
The Touch now has landscape orientation that works on all files including pdfs. You open the doc then select it in the menu.
---
### Author:  [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2012, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/13 "2012-10-04T00:04:45Z")
I don’t know if it’s of interest to the OP, but my preferred technique for getting books onto my iPod Touch is to convert PDF to TXT, then load those TXT files in [iSilo](http://www.isilo.com/). I prefer this over other eBook readers because it gives me more flexibility in font size and color display; I really do want to read text and I do not want to flip virtual pages.
There are still some PDFs that are very uncooperative (others have mentioned problems, especially with columns), but I’ve had better luck than some of my early attempts with other readers.
---
### Author:  [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2012, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/14 "2012-10-04T00:19:11Z")
> [@Smeghead](#):
>
> Kindle these days can read .pdfs natively. As for iBooks, there are multiple apps for reading .pdf files on the iPad. I use one called GoodReader, which works beautifully.
That’s slightly misleading (though I don’t think that’s your intent). iBooks can read PDFs natively, no conversion or other apps required. You just drag the PDF to the books section in iTunes and sync.
---
### Author:  [@jacobsta811](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacobsta811)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2012, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-pdf-files-for-e-readers/636394/15 "2012-10-04T12:59:18Z")
Frankly, the best way to read PDFs is on an e-reader/tablet large enough that the PDF is readable as-is (with margins removed). From experience that doesn’t really happen until you get into the 9-10" large tablet range. 7" is a little small even with aggresively removing the margins so the text is right up against the edges of the screen. On a Kindle Keyboard reading PDFs was a joke - it works, and you can rotate them sideways as the one poster above asked, but you still are scrolling around a lot to read the whole page and it is really kind of a jarring experience.
As far as conversion, that is mostly covered above. Note that my experience is that the conversion tends much more towards the “useless” end of the spectrum even when doing some manual work such as search & replacing headers/footers and screwing with the line unwrapping.