There are lots of conversion options on the left side, but for now, for the sake of the demo, we can go with all the defaults. Take defauts for starters.Īt the top right is a popup button where you'll select the destination format. Right click the document to bring up this menu.Īfter you select 'Convert Individually, a conversion page will appear.Ĭonversion page. You'll see some contextual options that look like this: Select the document, then right click it. Notice the 'Add books' icon at the top left.Īfter you've navigated to the PDF file and loaded it, the file will appear in the library list in the center as shown above.Ģ. After you launch Calibre, it looks like this. It's free.įor simplicity, I'm going to focus on the iPad in this How-to.ġ. Calibre eBook reader for OS X by Kovid Goyal, currently at version 0.9.18.It may be helpful to have the PDF file in a handy place, say your Mac's Desktop. There are several ways to do the conversion on a Mac, then transfer to your iPad, but I'll just focus on one technique that I like and is easy to follow. (For notes on eBook terminology, see ' Everything About eBooks & eReaders, Pt 2: eBook Types') One way to solve this problem is to convert the PDF document to EPUB for reading in Apple's iBooks app or to the MOBI format for use with the Kindle app.

If we expand it for easier viewing, we lose content on the edges. Here's a partial screen shot of the PDF user manual for MacJournal 6 from an iPad. If you want to make the text larger on an iPad, for easier reading, you can pinch-zoom, but that often results in the edges of the document sliding off the display. Here's how to do the conversion on a Mac and load the document onto your iPad or iPhone.įirst, why might one want to do that conversion? The reason is that, in general, PDF documents don't allow you to modify the font size. Occasionally, it may be desirable to convert a PDF file to the MOBI for EPUB format for use on an iPad (or even an iPhone) with, say, the Kindle Reader or iBooks.

Convert a file to epub on mac