2012-03-18

Issuu Publication Downloader

I created a tool named Issuu Publication Downloader and decided to share it.

Here is an info from the readme file:
The tool itself is a batch script that uses GNU Wget made by Giuseppe Scrivano and Hrvoje Nikšić. The main purpose of it is downloading Issuu publications which aren't available for the download the usual way. Normally, to download an Issuu publication, one has to register first, and publication itself needs to have download enabled. When using this tool neither of these two requirements are needed because it downloads the images, shown to users through a Flash application when they are reading them, directly from the server.

Download: Issuu Publication Downloader v1.0 (2012-03-18)

EDIT: Look at the source code of the website to find a document ID. If you are using Firefox, just press Ctrl+U to open the source, and then use Ctrl+F and search for "documentid".

Add-on: ICDL Book Downloader v1.0 (2013-10-02)

177 comments:

  1. Thank you very much for this!!!!

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  2. does this work? I don't understand the doc id step. o.o

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  3. lmao, nevermind, I got it to work. thanks!!

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  4. I think it stopped working. Can you fix it?

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  5. I just checked and it works perfectly. Look at the source code of the website to find a document ID. If you are using Firefox, just press Ctrl+U to open the source, and then use Ctrl+F and search for "documentid".

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  6. thanks greetings from italy!

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  7. Thanks a lot for sharing man !!
    That's fucking awesome !!

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  8. thanks man, you are great!

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  9. works great, you are the MAN!

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  10. Giving an error thAt wget is not an internal or external command, plz help.

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  11. @Akkshay I suppose you are running it from inside the archive. You have to extract the contents of the ZIP archive into a new folder in order to use this tool.

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  12. it works but after downloading i cant find the files. "downloads" folder is empty :/

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  13. MediaFire says "Invalid or Deleted File." and I cannot find it elsewhere. Can you re-upload it please, eqagunn? Thank you!

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, MediaFire deleted my account.
      There you go, I reuploaded to RapidShare.

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  14. they erased it :(
    another link?

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    Replies
    1. RapidShare link is still alive and working fine.

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  15. "File owner's public traffic exhausted..."

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  16. Amazing! Thanks

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  17. Reuploaded to a new MediaFire account. Enjoy.

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  18. Hi

    I am trying to downloead two files:

    http://issuu.com/rmsilva/docs/manual_hst

    and

    issuu.com/rmsilva/docs/manual_de_seguran_a__higiene_e_sa_de_no_trabalho_m/1


    I do Ctrl+U, Ctrl+F and i copy de ID...

    When the aplication end there no fil in the downloads

    Thanks
    cfgtorres@gmail.com



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    Replies
    1. Here, take a look, work fine on my PC:
      http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/9835/exampleud.jpg

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  19. Absolutely brilliant!
    Curiosity question; you have to type the document ID in - you can't copy and paste [I presume this is due to copy and pasting not working in a DOS dialogue box]?
    BTW - this worked perfectly and exactly as you described it in Google Chrome as well as FireFox...........
    Cheers
    Erwin

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    Replies
    1. "Ctrl+V" doesn't work in Command Prompt, but good old "Right click and Paste" does. :)

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  20. i have a problem. The files are not saved in ``downloads``, and i can not find it

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    Replies
    1. I don't know. Try running as administrator.

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    2. The downloaded files are save in folder "downloads" under the same folder you saved/extracted the batch file "issuudl.bat".

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    3. And always remember to extract archived (zipped) applications, before using them.

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  21. Thank you for sharing, eqagunn. It works perfectly.

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  22. I can't find the downloaded file on the PC!

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  23. Took me a minute to figure it out, but once I did, it worked like a charm. Thanks.

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  24. You should make this into a browser extension =)

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  25. Took me a few minutes but works like magic! thank you!

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  26. Thanky you! This is a great work!!!! Is there a programm for scribd?

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    Replies
    1. Images there are named using random hax numbers, so I can't adjust this to work with Scribd.

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  27. Hi
    i've got this as error:
    'wget' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file.
    'wget' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file.

    can you help

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    Replies
    1. Extract the archive first, than use the tool.

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  28. Thanks!!! That's magic!

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  29. Many Thanks ! ! ! :)

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  30. Thanks !Thanks !Thanks !Thanks !Thanks !Thanks !Thanks !Thanks !Thanks !Thanks !Thanks !Thanks !Thanks !

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  31. Thank you so much!
    Your script worked perfectly and saved me a lot of precious time.
    The next time I solve a problem of the masses, I'll publish it likewise!

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  32. Really great - works perfectly. Many many thanks!

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  33. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  34. omg it finally worked after like x amount of times trying! Thank you!

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  35. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  36. It worked. Thank you SO much for doing something like this. (:

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  37. where is the document's id? since i can't now share to people's

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  38. When I view the publication all the menu items, browser address bar, and so on disappear. Therefore, I cannot view the source. Since I can't view the source, I can't figure out how to check the document ID. Anyone able to help with this? I even went to a Macintosh and tried there. Same problem - can't get a menu to view the source.

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  39. thanks totally works !!

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  40. merci.. really needed it.

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  41. hi. thanks for the program, but i can´t install it. when i run it, appears a black window for a few seconds, and nothing else happens... what's the problem? thanks again!

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  42. Thanks for the tip.
    Works fine :)

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  43. Works, downloads JPG files, however browser cahce has swf files that might be more valuable

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    Replies
    1. Agree. Any chance to change the jpg into swf in the script, eqagunn? That'd be great - Thanks

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    2. Replying to myself and thaking at the same another Anonymous. If you want the swf instead of the jpg, check Anonymous' message on 08 April, 2014 14:44. It's all good in there :)
      Thanks to the developer too of course! Nice useful little tool :; it'll indeed be perfie when it'll be able to convert the whole in pdf docs.
      Good luck with that.

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  44. Thank you very much!

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  45. there is for mac

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  46. Thank you, mate.

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  47. I had problem, that I did not find downloaded files in folder downloads. Then I realized, that I was filling only part of the ID. You have to ctrl+copy / right click+paste WHOLE LONG ID from source code. Something like this: 120529117922-7cdf672345b242babg6b8c9c8b4d3ad7
    Hope it will help, if You can't find files.

    And BIIIIIG THANKS to author for his effort!
    Slovak.

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  48. this is great but i dont like how it downloads the pages in jpg instead of pdf :/ would be nice to get a vector copy, beats raster any day. any chance?
    good job tho ;)

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  49. Thank you for this. I'm just wondering if it really took long to download.

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  50. This works great, but I wonder can this downloads multiple pages at once?

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  51. Hello,
    grat jib indeed, just downloaded the tool and immediately later the document was in the right folder on my HD! Thank you very much!.

    BTW, just reading some comment above... While reading the document through
    the ISSUU reader (IssuuReaderLauncher.swf) it seems of better quality (it's a picture
    indeed but it scales better, like if it comes from a vector or in any case high-res picture);
    is there a way to download those kind of pictures as vectors or in higher resolution
    than page_xxx.jpg are?

    Thank you again, and keep thumbs up! Very good tool!

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  52. That work great... why u dont add print to pdf? so can be 1 file pdf... Great Job Guys....

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  53. OMG THIS IS SOOO GOOOD THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!!
    CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH DUDE!!!

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  54. Thank you very much from italy, you are a genius!
    (I am writing here a phrase in italian in order to be easily found by google ;-)

    programma gratuito per scaricare documenti, pubblicazioni, testi, scritti da issuu, pdf completi, senza link di download, senza registrazione

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  55. Hey! Unfortunately this isn't working for me. :( Once it extracts the zip files I get the following files: 1) a folder with the title "downloads" which is completely empty 2) your blog url 3) issuudl.bat (which when I try to open it tells me "there is no application to open this"; I tried Unarchiver- doesn't work) 4) readme.txt 5) wget.exe (which just opens as an rtf).

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    1. Dude! That's messed up there. Issuudl.bat is a main program file which should by default be opened with Command Prompt (cmd.exe). I don't know how it doesn't have a file association on your system, but it should. Also, how the hell can executable like wget.exe be opened as Rich Text Format. Makes no sense, unless you are using something else than Windows.

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    2. I have the same problem.

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    3. This is a tool for Windows users.

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  56. you're a genius bro~ i gettin it works.

    love this <3 :)

    cheers~

    (2 June 2013)

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  57. great man! ty!

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  58. it has poor image resolution, how to solve it?

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  59. hello! do it work for mac? Thanks!

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  60. Works perfectly. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

    You're the best!!!!!

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  61. You're a life saver!! Thank you so much!!!! :)

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  62. Where is exactly the document ID in the source code?

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  63. Nice one eqagunn. Tks for this tool

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  64. Works perfectly.You're the best!
    Thank you so much :)

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  65. Fiz o procedimento todo.Aparece a mensagem DONE, mas não está na pasta downloads...como localizo isso?Obrigado.

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  66. Thanks a lot for your work :) :)
    Works perfectly!

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  67. Thank you for helping us.
    It works flawlessly! You are a great, great guy.
    Regards,
    Erwin

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  68. thanks for sharing, works perfectly!

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  69. Awesome script. Thank you.

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  70. Easy as hell...thanx a lot muah...got a Rs.3000 publication for free...LOL

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  71. How to use it?

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  72. actually you can get a vector copy of the page if you change a link like this
    http://image.issuu.com/111019004740-28bac3d62e28477b87202c8e9a8e1c16/jpg/page_40.jpg
    to this
    http://page.issuu.com/111019004740-28bac3d62e28477b87202c8e9a8e1c16/swf/page_40.swf Enjoy = D

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  73. WHAT IS DOCUMENUM ID?

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  74. Yeah, this is incredible. You, good sir, are a genius.

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  75. Ok, I have 1700 documents on ISSUU that I would love to be able to download back into my archives. Any hints? I plan on downloading to my PC and then upload to a VPS server running PHPbb 3.01

    Using IE as a browser on the PC

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  76. thanks you are awesome!!!

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  77. Hi, thanks for the great tool you made. I was wondering if you can make a simular tool for childrenslibrary?
    (childrenslibrary.org)
    I don't have the skills to make it.
    Thank you

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  78. Childrenslibrary Downloader is perfect. today you make
    a lot of childrens happy.
    Thank you

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  79. man it's marvelous!
    except for the quality of the jpeg is a lil bit low, but still it's the best solution !
    hope for updating

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  80. Thank you! Great job!
    From the beginning I have used your program to download Issuu publications.
    Please have a request:
    You could make a script to these publications:
    http://veja.abril.com.br/acervodigital/home.aspx

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  81. This is GREAT !!!
    A little work typing document id because copy-paste does not work (here), but worth the effort !!!
    Congratulations from Belgium.

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    Replies
    1. As I already said in one replay, Ctrl+V doesn't work, but RightClick and paste works fine.

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    2. You can also paste with keyboard by pressing.
      Alt+Space then E then P.

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  82. Hi there, congratulations for your work and thanks for making it available to all of us.
    Do you think there's a way to download the jpg files in maximum issuu quality?
    Indeed, for music scores the extracted jpg files are not readable, which is a pitty.
    Thanks in advance for your answer.

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    Replies
    1. In the meantime, I have found a way to extract the swf files and then converted them to bmp, in order to make à pdf file. You should proceed like this.
      1. Download the SWF files of each page:
      http://page.issuu.com/XXXXxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/swf/page_Y.swf
      where XXXXXX is the documentID and Y the number of the page
      2. You then convert the swf files to bmp with, for example: 123 Swift Image Extractor
      3 you collect the bmp files with adobe acrobat (or any PDF creator) to make a PDFfile
      It takes some time, but it's doable for musicscores most of all...

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    2. 123 Swift Extractor works fine, but the free version does leave a watermark on the images. I used swfextract - part of http://www.swftools.org/ and that worked brilliantly!

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    3. I use KurstSWFRenderer myself, extracts to PNG which while not quite as good as BMP is still better than JPG and the tool has the option of upsizing the flash content to get a better overall quality

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    4. Also, I modified the issuudl.bat file to download swf instead of jpg files. Just edit the bat file, look for the line beginning with 'wget' and replace with 'wget -nv -q -P ".\downloads%dest%" http://page.issuu.com/%id%/swf/page_%page%.swf'

      Many thanks to the author for creating this tool, has been a huge lifesaver for me!

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    5. Thx for the tip, man!
      Appreciated.

      Delete
  83. I can't find the download, it seems to be working, i get asked how many pages it is and then i'm told it's downloading, but the folder is empty? what type of file is it a jpeg? flash?

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    1. It's jpg. The only thing that comes to my mind is that you did not extract the archive. If that's not it, then I don't know what's the problem.

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  84. any upadte to this program were the quality is much better

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  85. hi, how to download from google chrome because when click at the page it didnt show the inspect element. please teach me how to download from chrome and how to do swf thing. thank you so much for this downloader.

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  86. hey it's really great, but i was wondering if it could be used to download google books too?

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  87. Works perfectly! Thank you so much for sharing your work.

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  88. It works! You genius!

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  89. thank you, it's magic !

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  90. do you have any downloader or know any way you can download documents from scribd that are protected {they dont have a download button}

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    Replies
    1. Been awhile since I used this but presumably still works: You'll need to search the page source for the proper document_id and access_key strings but this is the basic URL you'd need to modify:

      http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=48036387&access_key=key-1xu6zu5hxb5wwijmkdhs&page=1&viewMode=list

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  91. Hi
    nice tool. Do yuo have a version for Linux?
    thks
    mario

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    Replies
    1. I kind of neglected Linux over the years, but I guess I could try converting this to bash script. I should be able to do something as simple as this. :D

      Delete
  92. Hello dear, first of all I want to thank you for the wonderful tool created by you. It indeed saves a lot of time and gives access to more information. It is a great step towards the concept of "Universal acess to Knowledge".

    Secondly, I noticed a thing that while downloading, if there is some problem with internet and the connectivity breaks for a moment, the download has to be restarted from page 1 even if 90% of the pages had already been saved.

    I was wondering if this could be fixed by some new option to download specific pages even from the middle or end of the publication. Please see if this is possible. This could be really helpful. Thanks and congratulations again.

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    Replies
    1. Hm. I can't check the hash before downloading the file itself, but I could make it check if the file name already exists. However, last file that was being downloaded when the connection broke could be left corrupted this way. How come this is an issue for you? Those are small image files and you don't need long to download them, unless you have a slow connection. But yeah, as you said, I could add an option to manually specify the range of the pages you want to download.

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  93. Thank you so much. This is amazing. Cheers to free knowledge!

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  94. this is perfect, thank you so much :D . {Romania}

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  95. NO WAY!!! Awesome!!! Thank u so much (UIO)

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  96. Simply awesome! Thanks a million my friend!

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  97. Hi equagunn :-). Thanks for this solution :-). Its a big help for me. I have a concern though, can issuu detect that we are downloading fr them? Can they block me? I'm enjoying this a lot but I'm worried that my happy days of downloading will be over later on. Pls do shed a light on this, thanks in advance!

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    Replies
    1. There is no way for them to detect that you are doing this. No need to worry.

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  98. OK, thanks a lot for the assurance :-)

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  99. Hi eqagunn,firstly,thanks for this great tools!It always working for me. But today,with the same process of the previous success download,I can't find the download result. Is there anything that has been change in issuu webpage?thanks for your info!

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  100. any similar program for smashwords

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  101. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  102. Overall a great programme! However, I would like to know if there is a way to download better quality images, even though it might take some more time.

    Thanks in advance!

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  103. I know at least two good issuu competitors. It's http://www.scribd.com and http://www.paperzz.com

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  104. ISSUU - this is a nice little tool to capture the images but Can you or one of you clever young guys figure out a way to download the source pdf file that these images come from. When a designer or developer has the PDF it makes editing the documents type and especially VECTOR IMAGES very exciting. I dont see issuu as the same way you are looking at it. Yes the photos are a benefit - But I want the editable PDFS so I can make a design quickly for a client by using someone elses work. Any Suggesyions --- SOME files on issuu are allowed to be downloaded. But many new ones are not -- Becasue issuu is starting to charge publishers to allow public to dowload becasue there is a tracking marketing opportuinioty

    This is capturing the images -- H O W E V E R -- there is a much more important file that it is not downloading.. THE PDF.

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  105. Use http://akhapps.blogspot.ca/

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  106. This is exactly what I need! Damn!

    Please help me out on this one.
    I'm using Safari on a Mac book.

    After downloading on your link, I have this blog.url, folder 'downloads', issuudl.bat, read me.txt, wget.exe. What to install?

    Nicky

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    Replies
    1. There is a reason ReadMe.txt file is called like that.

      Delete
  107. I don't find the downloaded file!
    Can you check this item?
    5008898/10409209
    However.....THANKS!

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  108. I've tried this a few years back and its awesome! but today I'm trying to use it again but its seem that, it doesn't download anything anymore...

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  109. use this one it works flawlessly:
    http://abuouday.com/scripts/issuu-downloader/

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  110. Correction of the url:
    http://abuouday.com/tools/issuu-downloader/

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  111. I'm sure this tool is fantastic, but it will not work with ScoresOnDemand (musical scores) on ISSUU. Is there any way of modifying it to enable the downloading of scores?

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  112. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  113. Firstly, this is an awesome utility. However, the output for the below mentioned download was not satisfactory!

    When I input the DocumentID the utility is displaying an error message! Hence I tried with the entire URL, the process is going through but Images and complete page set is absent.

    Please take a look at the batch I created to download this particular publication. Need your kind advise where I am going wrong.

    wget http://go.epublish4me.com/ebook/ebook?id=10082421 35

    Once again thanking you for the great effort!

    IDN
    wget http://go.epublish4me.com/ebook/ebook?id=10082421 35

    Once again thanking you for the great effort!

    IDN

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  114. or you can try this free online tool to download magazines from issuu:
    http://issuudownload.com/

    no ads or fees

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  115. THANK YOU soooo much this is incredible

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  116. I've taken this utility and added some features. Now you can paste in a URL and download to pdf. You can download it here:
    https://github.com/zgarnog/issuu-pub-dl

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  117. Amazing! Thank you so much.

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  118. Thanks for helping ^^
    Tool is working great :)

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  119. Thanks you so much :)
    it's really work..

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  120. Thank you and bless you abundance.

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  121. Is it possible to make the downloaded pictures more clear?

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  122. Hi! Just download images as swf file. Than drop to browser page or open swf in browser (I use Chrome). Than save it in pdf. You get excellent "curved" pdf. Enjoy!!!

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    Replies
    1. how i do ?
      I do not see the option to download in swf

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  123. If you use Chrome use print from browser

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  124. This worked like a charm. Thank you!

    Perhaps the instructions should note that all documents will be downloaded to the "downloads" folder from the compressed file that included the application. Also, remind folks that the download may take several minutes..

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  125. ICDL Book Downloader v1.0 not working Please update fix. Thanks

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  126. Check out this new tool it can download any issuu document online and without ads!!
    http://issuu-pdf-download.tinker-tools.com/

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  127. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  128. ERROR - command failed: [ ./wget.exe -nv -q --output-document="temp-1478436684.
    html" "https://issuu.com/adpware/docs/mc101" ] :
    ==== output: ====
    =================
    command failed at issuu-dl.pl line 389
    main::_get_doc_data_by_url('https://issuu.com/adpware/docs/mc101') calle
    d at issuu-dl.pl line 343

    Press any key to exit...
    -------------------------------------------------------

    Hi eqagunn, what happened here and what am I doing wrong ... thank you for this app ...

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  129. I uploaded the code to github with an update to zero-pad the file name, file0001.jpg instead of file1.jpg. This makes PDF creation much easier.

    http://github.com/yrnkrn/issu-downloader

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  130. Ciao, è ancora funzionante questo sistema?

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  131. hi, thi system is ok now? I've try with a big pubblication (690pages) but I not found it in download folder, can you help me?

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  132. when i search for "documentid". does not find. another way?

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  133. thanks sir i love that and if anyone want to download issuu document then you can use issuu pdf downloader

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