How to Convert PDF Files to ePub and MOBI Formats

Many books, files, journals, and other publications are usually found only in PDF format because it’s been in use long before the other two were. It’s also versatile and can handle text and images well on a wide range of devices, including ebook readers.

With the advent of mobile devices, though, ePub and MOBI are becoming increasingly popular, but they support different things.

EPub, or electronic publication, supports audio, video, and other embedded interactivity, and you can download and read the files on your mobile device or PC. MOBI or Mobipocket ebook file, stores digital books and supports bookmarking, adding notes or corrections, frames and JavaScript for use especially with low-bandwidth mobile devices.

If you’re looking to capture the growing e-reader user market, you can convert your PDF files to ePub or Mobi format for ease of access and reading across multiple devices. Here we’ll show you how.

Also read: 5 File Conversion Apps for Android

How to Convert PDF Files to ePub Format

To convert your PDF to an ePub file, you’ll need an ebook converter. There are several file conversion apps you can use online, but there are also desktop apps that can help you with this.

If you want a desktop file conversion app, you can use Calibre. It’s an open-source tool you can download for free and use to convert your PDF file to ePub using these steps:

1. Open Calibre on your computer and click “Add books.” You can add more books by selecting the option from the down arrow under “Add books.”

2. Open the PDF file you want to convert to ePub and click Open.

3. Click “Convert books.”

4. The Convert dialog box will open up. Click the down arrow next to Output format and select EPUB.

5. Make the necessary edits on the PDF’s title, author, and metadata fields, and the tags. Click OK once you’re done adding these details. You can format the document’s paragraph spacing and font size by clicking “Look & feel.”

6. In the left pane, next to Formats, click the arrow and select EPUB.

7. Choose your ePub file and select the down arrow next to View. Open the file by clicking “View with Calibre e-book viewer.”

9. Click Next Page and Previous Page to check the output of the ePub file. Once you’re done with this, close the viewer to go back to the library.

10. Right-click your ePub file in the Calibre library and choose “Open containing folder” so you can locate the file from where it was saved after the conversion.

How to Convert PDF Files to MOBI Format

Converting your PDF file to MOBI format also requires a file conversion tool. You can use the ePub file you converted from PDF in the previous steps and convert it to MOBI using Calibre.

Alternatively, you can pick a different PDF converter online and convert from PDF to MOBI directly. In our case, we used the PDF2MOBI online converter. It’s free, fast, and you can upload up to 20 PDF files, plus its user interface is simple as is the conversion process.

To convert PDF files to MOBI format, follow these steps:

1. Go to your browser and open the PDF2MOBI website. Click “Upload File,” select your PDF file from your computer, click on it and wait until it’s uploaded on the platform.

2. Click Download. The tool will begin converting your PDF to MOBI format.

Converting ePub to MOBI

If you converted your PDF to ePub and now want it in MOBI format instead, you can use Calibre to do it following these instructions:

1. Open Calibre and click “Add books.”

2. In the Select books dialog box, find the ePub file you want to convert and click Open to add it to the library.

You can click “Edit Metadata” to change the front cover of your ebook in the Change cover section, and also edit the title, author, tags, publisher and other text boxes if you’d like.

3. Click OK to go back to the library and then click “Convert books”

4. Click Output format, select MOBI and then click OK.

5. Click Formats and select MOBI to find the file you’ve just converted, and then select it and click “Save to disk” to save the file to your PC.

Once your file is in MOBI format, you can read it on a smartphone as long as it supports the format or an Amazon Kindle. If you have the Amazon Kindle app, you can read MOBI files from your Windows, Mac and mobile devices.

It’s also possible to send ePub files to your Kindle directly either by attaching it to an email and addressing it to the email you use with Send to Kindle or using Send EPUB to the Kindle service online.

Challenges of Formatting and Bad Conversions

Ideally, if you intend to create a PDF file that will convert well into ePub or MOBI formats, the first step is creating the PDF in a word processor. Here are a few tips you can use to avoid such challenges:

• Use the built-in formatting styles of the word processor-like styles for headings, bulleted or numbered lists, paragraph indentation and alignment, page breaks, page orientation, and single font in your text.
• Set up the pages so they can be read by an e-reader.
• Use inline images where there’s text above or below images instead of wrapping around the images.
• Use JPEG or PNG formats for images.

Wrap-up

We hope you now know how to convert your PDF files into ePub or MOBI formats. The best method is by using an app (desktop or Web) that can convert to both and other formats for different devices, but make sure the PDF is well-formatted to avoid any formatting and poor conversion issues on the ePub or MOBI file.

We’d love to hear your recommendations or suggestions on how you convert your PDFs to ePub or MOBI files. Share in a comment below.