Kindle (Mac): transfer via USB

Instead of using a USB connection, you can also transfer your e-book to your Kindle by email.

Connect the Kindle

If you have set up your Mac to show removable drives on the desktop automatically, an icon for the Kindle will appear on your desktop.

Otherwise, open the Finder and you will see "Kindle" listed as one of your devices:

Open the Kindle window on your PC

Either double-click on the Kindle icon on your desktop (if there is one) or click once on "Kindle" in the sidebar of your Finder window.

You will see a collection of folders:

The important folder is the one called 'documents'. Open it by double-clicking on it, and view its contents:

(your Kindle will probably have a lot more files listed than ours does).

Copy the e-book to the Kindle

Now all you need to do is to copy the file that you created in step 2, which is now sitting on your desktop, into the Kindle's 'documents' folder. The easiest way of copying the file is to drag it from your desktop into the 'documents' folder that you are looking at: You will end up with your file in the Kindle's 'documents' folder, something like this:

Eject the Kindle - IMPORTANT

You are nearly there. There is just one thing that you need to do to complete the process. You need to tell the Mac to disconnect itself from the Kindle. This will make the Mac write every bit of necessary information to the Kindle, and it will change the Kindle back from being a USB drive to being a real, live e-book reader.

To do this, click on the "eject" button just to the right of the word "Kindle" in the left-hand Finder pane. Two things will happen: your Kindle will go back to being a Kindle again, and your Mac will no longer see a device called "Kindle". You can now safely unplug the cable.

Common problems

When people contact us because they have trouble getting a Universalis e-book onto the Kindle, the commonest reason is that they have copied the e-book file onto the Kindle somewhere other than the 'documents' folder. When they look at their Kindle in Finder on their Mac, the file is there. When they look for the book on their Kindle, the e-book isn't there. The Kindle can only see e-books if you put them inside its 'documents' folder. If you put them anywhere else, they won't be seen. The cure is simple. Remove the e-book file from the wrong place, and put it in the right one.

Another thing that people sometimes do is to copy the Universalis program onto the Kindle - or to drag the Universalis program icon onto the Kindle. These things won't work. The Universalis program is a program, not an e-book; and the Universalis program icon isn't even a program, just a pointer to a program. To get things to work the way you want them to work, use the Universalis program to create e-books, and then transfer them to the Kindle yourself, in the way described on this page.

A more direct method for advanced users

Once you feel confident, you can skip the business of saving the file to your desktop and then copying it to the Kindle. Here's how you go about it:

Plug in the Kindle before you ask Universalis to create the file.

Ask Universalis to create the file, and when the window pops up, scroll through the "Devices" list on the left until you see "Kindle", then click on "Kindle". You'll see something like this:

Do not press Save yet. You are not yet looking at the 'documents' folder, only at the Kindle as a whole. Double-click on 'documents' and you'll see something like this:

The key thing to check is that you have 'documents' named in the box near the top of the window.

Now press Save, and the Universalis program will create the file and put it straight onto your Kindle for you. Once it has finished, do the same "Eject" procedure that was described above.