Exporting highlights from Books app no longer works on iOS 16 [bug report]

This is really a disappointment. And does make ibooks less useful. Even scrolling through highlights and notes the are abreviated.. you cannot see the full notes unless you expand them. ; This should be fixed. Really makes it harder to find your notations in ibooks. So disappointed.

you can't even search your own notes. you have to search the text; know exactly the word combination you highlighted on a standard search rather than scan your notes to find what you are looking for. really bad.

What was Apple thinking? This latest update to Books is a major mistake.. I can get tap-and-hold with shift to select multiple highlights in Books on the Mac but not on the iPad. And on the Mac I find no way to export or copy the highlights. In addition, the menu options are inconveniently placed and awkward to use. I have long been recommending Books to students as a convenient way to highlight the important parts of assigned reading and then to save those highlights for review and study. After this latest so-called improvement to the app, I will no longer make that recommendation. I will continue to recommend GoodReader, which is an excellent alternative but, unfortunately, only works with PDF text. Luckily, many assigned texts and academic papers are available in PDF. The latest version of Books for IOS and IPadOS 16 should immediately be recalled with apologies and a rethought version issued in its place.

For iBooks EXPORT ALL notes feature: Ditto both the need for this feature to be reinstated and the urgent nature of this need!

I'm a student in school. Using books, annotating, and exporting ALL notes at once is a critical part of my study workflow. I do this for every class, every book, every day!

The iOS Book app update has many faults, but not having an export ALL notes is the fault that breaks the experience!! Books is useless to me without the EXPORT ALL feature. Please fix urgently and push out in next patch!!

Interesting -- I can't surface the specified UI when I'm in iBooks on the iPad (or any of the other Apple book platforms) (per https://help.readwise.io/article/35-how-do-i-import-apple-books-highlights-from-my-iphoneipad)

step 3: Select the overview screen (three horizontal lines, top left)

Isn't available on iOS 16.1 using any method I've tried-- overview screen selection comes up in the bottom right now, with the details shown

if there's something I'm unaware of I'd be (very) happy to discover it.

Just for clarity: I'm (& I think most of the people on this thread) are trying to export their own notes from the apple books app to a "text" document that they can access in other apps -- as noted above, the "easiest" way I've found is to individually copy notes into a text document on me mac and then run a grep script to strip them down to a manageable format.

Initial selection

Details:

This change will make it a LOT harder for me to read books on my iPad as I always take notes.

Now I have to either take notes on a separate device or use a different app.

Very annoying.

Agreed. Much easier to do on a Mac than on an iPad. But the exports are tedious to export and annoying, Each section of exported text contains the "Excerpt from. . .This material may be protected by copyright" notice as well as an unnecessary link to the book in the Apple Bookstore. The process is tedious, even on a desktop, and once the highlights are exported one must still search and replace all those notices and links. Apple has either been thoughtless with its update or is making a deliberate effort to discourage the export of highlights and notes. This supposed upgrade, together with the confused design of the new 10th generation iPad, makes me wonder if the company still knows its customer.

Rally your classmates and perhaps Apple will heed your call. When advising students on technology aids. exporting highlights and notes from Apple Books has been a top recommendation and the feedback has been uniformly positive. Let's hope Apple restores the feature.

Are you running the version of Books that accompanies iPad OS 16? Your instructions seem to apply to previous versions. If you’re on IPad OS 16, a more detailed set of your instructions would be helpful. I’m on 16.1.1 and despite several attempts, I’ve been unable to make your method work.

For anyone also using macOS, I've found that using Readwise is the easiest way to sync all highlights. You can then use them directly in Readwise or sync automatically with other apps like Obsidian etc.

Link: Readwise

It’s a shame! I’ve found this issue after I finished a tech book whose notes are to me important to study. It worked perfectly and was one of the reason why I switched out from Kindle.

I need alternative apps or the problem solved very soon

Hi @coreland. this might be very helpful in the short term. But I seem to loose all the highlights when I go to drop them into notes. Is there a maximum number of characters that this process can hadle?

And the multiple hands and gestures required makes it a very cumbersome process. As well, it seems the notes app has to be open in order to swipe to it. I have yet to execute the maneuver sucessfully.

I couldn’t believe this action by Apple to remove the ability export highlights. I have always tried to use Apple apps as I prefer them over others but when basic functionality like this is now nonexistent, I guess all new book purchases will be on Kindle. Hope they change this.

Agreed. I’ve done this already. You can email apple’s current CEO for direct customer feedback/feature request. I can’t post his email here because the forum automatically blocks it, but it is public so just Google it.

There is a way to export highlights, if you can get a spare older iPad running iPadOS 15. The overall idea is, sync the newer iPad Books to iCloud Drive, then sync the older iPad. From the old iPad you can email your notes out.

Here's the process, step by step:

1. Make sure the old iPad isn't syncing.

On the older iPad, running iPadOS 15:

Settings -> Books -> Syncing -> iCloud Drive -> Off

2. Make a full back up of your newer iPad and Library in case there are any problems in the sync process.

Be careful! You want to make sure the new iPad's books and highlights get copied to the old iPad, not the other way around! It's probably safest if the iPadOS 15 iPad starts with an empty Books Library, maybe even has just had a factory reset.

3. Turn on syncing on the new iPad, running iPadOS 16:

Settings -> Books -> Syncing -> iCloud Drive -> On

Wait until it starts showing progress on uploading your books and PDFs. I think it took a few minutes for me to see it start.

Then wait till it's says it's finished. I think it took around 10-15 minutes.

4. Now that the new iPad has finished uploading all your Library, turn on syncing on the old iPadOS:

Settings -> Books -> Syncing -> iCloud Drive -> On

5. Wait for the old iPad to finish syncing.

It will show progress as it goes, and it will take a while to fully sync.

For me, 100 books took about 20-30 minutes.

6. Now export your books from the older iPadOS:

while reading a book:

table of contents icon -> Notes -> Share icon -> Edit Notes -> Select All -> Share -> Mail

Here's another workaround I've used for exporting highlights and notes from Apple's latest Books app. Annoying but effective.

1) In Books on an iPad, highlight and make notes in your book as usual.

2) Enter Split View and select the Notes app.

3) In the Books section of the Split View, select Highlights.

4) Touch the first highlight and hold until the image brightens.

5) While continuing to hold the highlight, slide it over to the Notes view until a green circle appears with a white plus-sign in it.

6) While continuing to hold the highlight, touch each other highlight and note in the Books app, one at a time. The plus symbol in the green circle will become a number, showing the total highlights and notes touched.

7) Continue the process by scrolling down in the Books app until all highlights have been moved into the Notes page, then lift your finger. All designated text should then appear in the Notes screen section.

The next step is to eliminate the language "Excerpt from. . . may be protected by copyright." This can be done in Word on a Mac, but not in Pages, and not on an iPad.

8) In the Notes app on a Mac, select all of the contents just copied to Notes on your iPad and paste it into a new Word document.

9) In Word, select the first instance of the text "Excerpt from. . . may be protected by copyright."

10) Using the Find Replace, paste the Excerpt into the Find box and a symbol of your choice—such as the ^P paragraph mark—and replace all.

11) Then do another Find Replace to eliminate the symbol you just inserted.

Those eleven steps should give you what you used to be able to do with a single step in the previous version of Books.