Microsoft Removes Word-to-Kindle Sending Next Month

Next month, an easy one-click bridge between Microsoft Word and Amazon Kindle is going away. Microsoft announced that it would be sunsetting the Send Documents to Kindle feature baked into Word, which is certainly going to necessitate a new workflow for readers who send drafts, reports, or long articles directly from the ribbon straight onto a Kindle.

What Is Changing With Word’s Send to Kindle Integration

The Word feature, which rolled out widely in 2023, allowed users to send DOC and DOCX files from the Share menu directly into your Kindle library with optional conversion for a clean, reflowable display. Support documentation from Microsoft now says the integration is coming to an end, and while a button or two may linger for some users for the time being, it will be officially unsupported. Files that were previously sent through the tool remain untouched.

Microsoft did not offer an official explanation. The move is part of a broader trend toward cutting niche integrations within Office apps to focus on reliability, security, and core features that are used at massive scale.

What to Use Instead for Sending Documents to Kindle

Amazon’s own Send to Kindle tools are the substitute. The web uploader and Windows and Mac desktop apps take DOC, DOCX, PDF, TXT, RTF, HTM, HTML, PNG, GIF, JPG (and JPEG), BMP, and EPUB files up to 200 MB each. You log in with your Amazon account (for the Kindle devices and apps connected to it), pick where you want content delivered, and choose whether it should be converted for reflowable text.

Two practical tips:

• If exact layout is important (charts, complex tables), send a PDF.
• If you want Kindle features such as adjustable fonts, reading progress, word lookups, and notes that sync across devices or are shareable via a web browser, convert DOCX and EPUB files using the conversion feature on upload.

For power users, the old Send to Kindle by email option is still available and can be automated from scripts or document management systems.

Who This Affects in Writing, Education, and Business

The change affects writers, students, lawyers, and researchers who proof long Word documents on E Ink all the time. Kindle Scribe owners, especially, have exploited the Word shortcut to read over manuscripts and scribble on PDFs with their devices’ styluses. The native Word button remains; however, the implementation of these Amazon tools gives back some — but not all — of that functionality, and in our editorial workflows, we’ve noticed a small but important loss.

IT teams in education and business will also want to take note. Some companies permitted the Word-to-Kindle route because it remained within authenticated Microsoft 365 sessions. Transitioning to Amazon’s own apps or services may entail a rethinking of data-handling policies, particularly for sensitive content.

Why Microsoft Might Be Ending the Word-to-Kindle Feature

Neither company is talking numbers of usage, but the addressable base provides a clue. Good e-Reader: People still buy e-readers, not as frequently as phones or personal computers, and Amazon is leading the race in dedicated e-reader sales, according to industry analysts. That said, the intersection of users who both depend on Word and push drafts to Kindle will be much smaller than for mainstream Office functionality. Possible reasons are low adoption, feature duplication through Amazon’s own tools, or the cost of maintaining a cross-account integration.

There’s also a product strategy dimension to this. Microsoft has been focusing on export, share, and collaboration pathways around OneDrive, SharePoint, and Loop. Since that would be an edge case and not the supported use case, one can, at this point, start considering whether maintaining a specialized pipeline to some third-party reading software (in all its multiple versions, questionable features, etc.) is even what they want.

How to Prepare Now for the End of Word-to-Kindle Support

Configure Send to Kindle on your most frequently used platforms. If you’re mostly a PC or Mac user, install the desktop app and try out the web uploader to test conversion quality for your usual documents. If you depend on email delivery, whitelist your addresses with Amazon and set up a speedy rule in your email application to send off messages more quickly.

Before you lose the Word button, export a set of files using both and compare formatting, images, lists, and footnotes. For complex layouts, you might want to create a PDF directly from Word and send that over if there are issues with fidelity, though you’ll still need Scribe or Kindle apps for annotations.

The Bottom Line on Word’s Retired Send to Kindle Shortcut

The Word-to-Kindle shortcut is coming to an end next month, but reading your e-books on a Kindle is no longer necessary for anyone who was. Amazon’s Send to Kindle suite of apps does more or less the same thing as Google Play Books, but it supports a few more formats and can also handle documents in ZIP and PDF formats. It’s one more step, but most readers can still attain the same destination — clean and unimpaired marathon reading.

References for this article were obtained from the Microsoft support article about Word’s integration and Amazon’s documentation on Send to Kindle, as well as industry analysis of e-reader market share and usage trends from recognized research firms.