I tried to copy text from my purchased Google Play books in order to back up for making notes, but the reader does not allow me to do that. The copy option is appearing but it's grayed out. What else can I do?
Google Play Books is a popular ebook provider and offers readers free access to many books. However, you can only read Google play books on the computer or mobile phone. The small type and the glare of a computer screen can be challenging for some readers. That's the reason why a lot of people would like to copy and paste the text from the ebook into a new document. After doing some research, here we've found 4 effective methods to copy text from Google Play Books.
Method 1. Copy Text from Google Play Books with the Built-in Command
The online Google Play Books library and the mobile app both allow you to copy text directly with the built-in command.
1. Copy Text from Google Play Books Online on PC/Mac
Step 1 Visit your Google Play Books library in a browser. Open the Google Play book you want to copy.
Step 2 Select the text that you want to copy by clicking and dragging the cursor until the text is highlighted. Then click the "Copy" button from the popping-up menu.
Step 3 Paste the copied text elsewhere you like.
Notice The "Copy" option is grayed out.
There are lots of Google Play Books that are not allowed to copy text from, because the Google Play Books bookstore has disabled the ability to copy and paste as a security/DRM measure. When you try to copy text from such Google Play books, you will find that the "copy" button is grayed out. For these books, you cannot directly copy text, but you can still try the below 3 methods.
2. Copy Text from Google Play Books App on Android/iOS
Copying text from Google Play Books app on Android/iOS is especially easy. Open a book in the app on your Android/iOS device and find the text you want to copy. Long-tap a word to select it, and drag and adjust the set of bounding handles to highlight all the text you want to copy. Then tap the "Copy" button in the menu that appears, and a notice will tell you that "Google Play Books: Text Copied"
Notice The "Copy" option does not show up.
Just like "the copy option is grayed out in the online library", the copy button may not be showing up in the app when you select the text from some books. For these Google Play books, you are not allowed to copy text. You should try some other methods which are already introduced in the following part.
Method 2. Copy Text from Google Play Books Highlights
Although some Google Play books don't allow you to copy text directly, there exists a workaround, that is to copy from the highlights. When you highlight a Google Play book in the online reader, you can go to the "Highlights and notes" option to copy the text.
Notice: The Google Play Books app doesn't allow copying text from the highlight. So this method is online available for PC/Mac users.
Step 1 Open a book in the Google Play books online library and highlight texts that you want to copy.
Step 2 On the top-right menu bar, click the "Highlights and notes" option. You will see all your highlighted paragraphs. Then just select the text that you want to copy, right-click it and choose "Copy".
Method 3. Take a Screenshot and Use OCR to Extract Text
An alternative is to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) extension or software. OCR is a widespread technology to recognize text inside images, such as scanned documents and photos. It is used to convert virtually any kind of image containing written text (typed, handwritten, or printed) into machine-readable text data. So this is basically a simple way to export text from Google Play books.
1. OCR - Image Reader (for Google Chrome on PC/Mac)
OCR - Image Reader is a free extension for the Google Chrome browser that is quite easy to use. First you need to add the extension to your Google Chrome. Then open the Google Play books in your Chrome browser, click the OCR extension on the extensions bar, select a rectangular area on the screen as if you are taking a screenshot. Next a dialog box pops up showing the text extracted from the screenshot. There is a button "Copy Text" that you can click to extract the text.
2. OCR App (for Android/iOS)
There are many free OCR apps that can take photos and convert the image to text. You just need to take a screenshot of the text that you want to copy from Google play books, upload the screenshot to the OCR app, and then extract the text from the image. Some of the examples of OCR app for Android/iOS are CamScanner and Text Fairy.
[Best] Method 4. Convert Google Play Books to TXT/PDF File and then Copy Text
If you still don't see a way to copy text given the options above, here comes the best method - convert the whole Google play book to TXT or PDF file. Compared with the above 4 methods, this one will allow you to copy text without limitations. You can copy any text anytime and anywhere. Let's do it together.
Step 1 Download Google Play Books to your computer.
First, open a browser on your computer and go to your Google Play Books library. Find "My Books", select a book, click the three-dots button in the corner, and then "Export".
Then a pop-up window will ask you to choose "Export ACSM for EPUB" or "Export ACSM for PDF".
Notice: You will probably get an .acsm file when it's downloaded. It's not a real ebook file. The ACSM files must be opened with Adobe Digital Editions.
Step 2 Now install and launch Adobe Digital Editions. The first time you open the program, you need to authorize it with an Adobe ID. If you don’t have one yet, just click "Create an Adobe ID".
Step 3 Open your Google Play Books (ACSM file) with Adobe Digital Editions. Simply right-click the file and choose "Open with Adobe Digital Editions", or just drag and drop the file to the ADE library. It will take a few seconds to download the ACSM file to a real ebook file. When it's finished, the book will be added to ADE and soon opened.
Step 4 Download and install Epubor Ultimate - the best Google Play Books to TXT/PDF converter.
Step 5 Convert Google Play Books to TXT or PDF with Epubor Ultimate.
Run Epubor Ultimate. All your Google Play Books (ACSM file) opened with Adobe Digital Editions are automatically detected and displayed under the "Adobe" tab of Epubor Ultimate at the left column. Now just drag and drop your books from the left side to the right column. You will find the books are automatically decrypted. Then you need to continue to click the button "Convert to TXT" or "Convert to PDF".
When the conversion is finished, just click the "Succeeded" word to find your converted TXT/PDF Google Play Books.
Step 6 Now you've got your Google Play books fully converted to PDF or TXT. And you can copy the text from your Google Play Books without limitations. Just open the txt file with Notepad (open PDF with any PDF reader), then you will be able to copy the text.
Michelle loves technology & reading very much. She seeks the methods to enjoy eBooks and audiobooks more freely and wants to share everything new she has got with you.
