Putting Personal Files on an E-reader

E-readers like the Kindle and the nook have become a popular way to read books at home and on the go. But you're not limited to reading books and magazines. You can use your e-reader or iPad to store your personal documents.

Tired of storing a collection of instruction manuals? Scan them and store them on your e-reader. It will save space. And, you can pull up the manual at a moment's notice.

Want to go paperless? Load your Kindle with important personal documents. Use your nook e-reader to review your electronic bills. Store your personal financial records on your iPad. Your e-reader becomes a portable filing cabinet, letting you access the information you need quickly and easily.

Of course, if you want to do all this, you need a way to load the files onto your e-reader or iPad. Fortunately, this won't take much effort on your part.

If you're working with paper documents, you'll need to digitize them. You'll want to scan them and save them as PDF files. Click here for help scanning paper documents to PDF format. You probably have all the tools you need.

Once you've converted your personal files to PDF, it may just be a matter of loading them on to your e-reader. The Kindle, nook and iPad all read PDF files. So does the Sony Reader and many other popular e-readers.

If your e-reader does not support PDF files, all hope is not lost. You can use a free program like Calibre to convert the PDFs to a compatible format. ePub is supported by many e-readers. Calibre will convert your personal documents to the ePub format.

Once you have your personal files in a compatible format, you can load them on to your e-reader. Check the manufacturer's site if you need help transferring your files. It should be the same as loading an e-book from your computer.

Many iPad apps will read PDFs. You can read them in Safari and in Mail. But, you want to store your PDFs in a central location. There are a number of PDF readers and similar apps for reading and managing PDFs on the iPad. But, Apple's iBooks app is all you need. You can load your PDFs to iBooks through iTunes.