You'll get a deck with one card per highlight from a book in Google Play Books. There are three ways to bring the highlights in. The import page they lead to is the same one Kindle uses, so Import your Kindle highlights covers the preview, the deck, the import mode and the 1,000-highlight limit. This guide covers what's different for Play Books.

What you need

• A Vocards account, signed in on the web. With the extension, sign in in the same browser: the import finishes on a Vocards page that needs you signed in.
• A book in Google Play Books with highlights in it.
• One of these: the Vocards extension in Chrome on a computer, which reads the highlights straight from the Play Books web reader; a Google Drive share link to your exported annotations; or the exported annotations as a .docx file.
• AI credits, only if you choose AI-enhanced. Every account gets 500 free every 30 days. Text only uses none.

To open the import page, go to Import, then Highlights from your e-books, then Google Play Books.

With the Chrome extension

The Browser extension card at the bottom of the import page links to the extension: Install the extension.

1. In Chrome, go to play.google.com/books. A Vocards panel in the bottom-right corner says Open a book first .
2. Open the book. The book opens in the Play Books web reader, and the panel changes to Import highlights to Vocards with an Import highlights button.
3. Click Import highlights . The button reads Importing… while the extension opens the reader's Annotations panel and reads your highlights from it. Then a new tab opens on the Vocards import page with the book's highlights listed.

Note: The extension finds the Annotations button by its English name. If Play Books is shown in another language, open the Annotations panel yourself with its icon in the reader's top toolbar before you click Import highlights . The extension then reads the open panel.

You can also click the Vocards icon in Chrome's toolbar and, under Import highlights , click Google Play Books . Away from Play Books it opens play.google.com/books in a new tab. With a book open in the reader, the same card has the Import highlights button. The popup asks you to sign in to the extension first, and to have at least one deck.

Now go to Check and import, below.

With a Google Drive link

Export your annotations to Google Drive, share the file, and paste its link into Vocards. The import page shows these steps too, under Step-by-step guide.

Note: Export to Drive only works in the web reader at play.google.com/books. Open it in a browser, not the Play Books app.

1. Export the annotations to Drive

Open the book in the Play Books web reader, then do one of these:

• Auto-save (recommended): open the ⋮ menu in the reader's top toolbar and turn on the option to save annotations to Google Drive.
• Manual export: open the Annotations panel with its icon in the top toolbar, and use the export option in the panel's ⋮ menu.

2. Share the file

1. Open the exported file in Google Drive.
2. Right-click the file and select Share .
3. Change access to Anyone with the link . Vocards downloads the file from the link, so it has to be publicly shared.
4. Copy the link.

3. Paste the link

Paste it under Paste a Google Drive share link and click Import from link. Links that start docs.google.com/document/d/, drive.google.com/file/d/ or drive.google.com/open?id= work. The book's highlights appear in the list.

Vocards keeps the link with the import, so you can sync it later. Add new highlights later, below, explains how.

With a .docx file

1. Export the annotations to Drive as in step 1 above.
2. Open the exported file in Google Drive and download it as a Word (.docx) file.
3. On the import page, click Choose file, or drag the file onto that box. It takes a .docx of up to 10 MB.

The page reads the file and lists the book's highlights. A file you upload can't be synced later. To add new highlights, export again and upload the new file.

Check and import

From here, the page works as it does for Kindle. Follow steps 3 to 7 in Import your Kindle highlights: pick the highlights, choose the deck and its languages, choose Text only or AI-enhanced, and import. A book with more than 1,000 highlights comes in over more than one import.

One thing is different for Play Books: within each color, highlights are grouped by the book's chapters. A highlight with no chapter goes under Other.

Add new highlights later

To add what you've highlighted since, use Sync now on a Drive-link import, or import the book again. Each checks for duplicates differently, so pick one per book and stay with it:

• The book came in from a Drive link, in one import: use Sync now on its row.
• The book came in any other way, or over more than one import: import it again and review the list before you click.

Don't mix them. A sync checks only its own import, so highlights you brought in by importing again come in a second time.

Sync a Drive-link import

A book you imported from a Drive link has a refresh icon, Sync now, on its row under Import history on the E-book highlights page. It downloads the document from the link again and imports every highlight that isn't already a card from that import, into the same deck, in the import mode you chose then. A message then says how many new highlights it found, or "Already up to date – no new highlights found" . You can sync the same row as often as you like.

Check the history before you sync:

• Sync brings in highlights you left out. Highlights you unticked or hid by color the first time count as new, and come in.
• A book listed more than once gets duplicates. Each import is its own row in Import history, and so is every Continue import after a stop, every Import the remaining 400 highlights on a book over 1,000, and every quick refresh. Syncing one of those rows imports the highlights from the other rows a second time.

If either applies, import the book again instead.

In AI-enhanced mode, a sync uses AI credits and won't start without them.

Import the book again

Use any of the three ways. When the page recognizes the book, it picks the deck it went into last time and marks the highlights from the most recent import into that deck Already imported. Only that one import is checked. If the book came in over several imports, earlier highlights show up as new. Choose Review first if the quick-refresh box appears, click Deselect all and tick only the new highlights. Add new highlights later in Import your Kindle highlights explains the box and the count.

On your phone

The iOS and Android apps take a .docx file or a Drive link:

1. Open Settings, then Import, Highlights from your e-books and Google Play Books.
2. Tap Upload .docx to pick the file with Choose file, or Paste Drive link to paste the link and tap Import from link.
3. Pick the highlights, the deck and the import mode, and import. The deck choices are Use existing deck and Create new deck.

Note: The app doesn't check for highlights you've already imported. To add new highlights to a book you have, use Sync now below, or import it again on the web, which marks them. If you do import it again on your phone, untick the ones you already have, or they come in a second time.

A Drive-link import made on your phone gets Sync now too, under Import history on E-book highlights. The advice under Add new highlights later applies there too.

The extension runs on a computer. On the Google Play Books screen, Send myself the link opens your phone's share sheet with the extension's link, so you can send it to yourself.

Limits

• 1,000 highlights per import.
• A .docx file of up to 10 MB.
• 20 an hour, shared by Kindle and Google Play Books. Each import you start counts, and so does each Google Play Books link Vocards reads and each sync. A .docx upload counts twice, once to upload and once to read. Photos and files you attach to create cards with AI count too. The count starts again an hour after the first of them.

If something goes wrong

If your credits run out, the import pauses or stops, some highlights fail, or the deck is deleted, see Fix an e-book import that paused, stopped or partly failed.