What Is an ANNOT File?

This article explains what an ANNOT file is, how to open one, and how to convert one to a different file format.

What Is an ANNOT File?

A file with the ANNOT file extension is an Adobe Digital Editions annotations file. It's saved in the XML format and used to store auxiliary data for EPUB files like notes, bookmarks, highlights, and other sorts of "meta" data.

Some files that end in this extension may instead be annotation files used with the Amaya web editing program.

How to Open an ANNOT File

ANNOT files are best opened with Adobe Digital Editions. This is the app that lets you create the notes, bookmarks, etc., but also, of course, to see them visually within the book.

However, since the format is the text-based XML, any text editor can be used to view the information, too.

Opening an ANNOT file in a text editor lets you see the same information that's in Adobe Digital Editions, but the text isn't structured in a user-friendly way. You do, however, have easy access to all the bookmarks and notes because they're not mixed in with text from the rest of the book—you can easily search through them. A text editor also lets you see the date and time of each note and bookmark.

The open source Amaya editor uses ANNOT files, too. Use that program to read the data if that's where it was created.

How to Convert an ANNOT File

Like XML files, data in the ANNOT file can be converted to any other text-based format, like TXT or PDF, by using Notepad, TextEdit, or any other text editor that can export files. However, while the converted file can remain legible in those other formats, Adobe Digital Editions won't be able to use it unless it remains in the ANNOT format, which means anything that the file stores will no longer be viewable when you're reading the book.

If Amaya annotation files are text-based, too (which we're unsure of), then they, of course, can be converted just like Adobe Digital Editions annotation files. Converting from Amaya has the same small print: saving the file in a different format means the software can't use the information normally, which means the file won't work with the program.

In the end, there's no real need to convert ANNOT files to any other format, regardless of the program they're used in.

Still Can't Open It?

ANNOT files aren't the same as ANN files, even though their file extensions are similar in spelling. The latter are Lingvo Dictionary annotation files associated with Lingvo Dictionary DSL files and opened using ABBYY Lingvo Dictionary 404.

There are several other examples we could give, including NOT. The idea is simple: if you can't open your file using the directions above, double-check the extension, because you might be dealing with a completely different file that just looks related because the extensions are similar.