Graphics Tablets: Convert a PDF for reading on the Kindle without using any software

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Convert a PDF for reading on the Kindle without using any software - PC World

Rick Broida, PCWorld USA

July 18, 2013 at 7:00 a.m.

Service

little known Amazon’s own, does the job and try to turn your documents into something more comfortable to read. But it does not always work.

If you use a Kindle for reading books and documents, you probably know that it supports not only eBooks, but also PDF files. Maybe even know each Kindle has an e-mail only (which you find in the settings screen), and you can send a PDF to the device simply including it as an attachment to a message to that address.

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The problem is that many PDFs are not optimized for viewing on the Kindle, and require a lot of zooming and scrolling so that they can be read. It is extremely uncomfortable. In my opinion, a file in this state is almost unreadable.

But here it is a trick that few people know: Amazon can convert this PDF into something more readable for you without any effort and without requiring you to install a software for that. Just put the word convert in the message subject to the attached file.

There are some caveats: the first is that the conversion takes time. In a test with some documents of a few pages each, they took almost an hour to get to my Kindle. The second is that the trick does not work with all PDFs. One of the documents I sent turned into an image rotated 90 degrees with each page divided in half. And I could not even make it zoom.

For more complex documents or problematic, as in my case, it is better to use a more robust conversion tool like Calibre, which is free. But if you’re away from your PC, or in a place where you can not install software, system conversion Amazon can save the day. It costs nothing to try.