iPad trick: Copy and paste from iBooks

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Many people are hoping the iPad can replace their traditional laptop for many productivity applications. One such group is students. If you need to copy text from one of your eBooks on your iPad, you may be disappointed to find out that the DRM management in iBooks does not allow this directly. Use this tip to copy and paste content from your downloaded eBooks.

So, you've got a new document open in Pages on your iPad. You've decided on your thesis and you've downloaded your required reading via the iBookstore. You get to a page where you'd like to quote a significant portion of the text (and cite it of course), but after highlighting and copying the text, you realize the paste option does not exist in Pages.

This could severely slow down the paper-writing process. But, fear not, there is a workaround. From your eBook, copy the text as you had before. Next, use the search function on the book. Paste the text into the search field and tap Search. You should come up with one entry (the one you highlighted). In the search field, select all the text and tap Copy. Now, go to Pages and you will be able to Paste the quoted text in your document.

This was tested using the provided Winnie the Pooh eBook on the iPad. The assumption here is that any eBook with DRM and a search function should perform the same, though I am sure there could be anomalies. Let us know your experience with this workaround in the comments.

(Credit: Apple Inc.)

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