Amazon's Kindle Scribe just got a massive free upgrade

(Image credit: Amazon)

published 26 April 2023

If you have or are thinking of getting Amazon's Kindle Scribe, which I think is one of Amazon's best tablets, it's just become even more useful. A new software update adds several genuinely useful features, including one that's been at the top of many people's wish lists: Send to Kindle from Microsoft Word. The feature is rolling out now for Windows users and will come to the Mac and Web versions imminently.

There's a catch, but it's a little one: you'll need to have a Microsoft 365 subscription. It's unclear whether the feature is also coming to people who own Word outright rather than pay a subscription for it but if like me you're one of those people you might want to keep an eye on Microsoft AutoUpdate and cross your fingers.

What new features are in the Kindle Scribe?

The Word export is the big one here: go to File > Export or File > Share and you should see the Send to Kindle option. You can now choose to share it "like a printed document" or "like a Kindle book". The former enables you to write on the page while the latter is for sticky notes only.

That's not all Amazon is adding, though. There's a new update to bird's eye view in Notebook mode that enables you to add/insert pages, move a page and delete a page, and you can now access two-column display mode from the new Aa menu setting in a book's layout tab.

Last but not least there's also a bunch of reading improvements including contrast adjustment on PDFs and improved annotations.

I really like the Scribe, and I think it's a good option and tablet alternative for people who work with a lot of documents – so these free updates are definitely worth having.

Send to Kindle is rolling out today on Windows and should make it to the Mac and Web versions shortly.

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).