Importing large bibtex-file fails

haraldkliems

I've successfully imported some smaller bibtex-files to Zotero, yet importing my main references db failed. I only get the error message "No translator could be found for the given field." The bib-file has about 650 entries, several of them with abstracts included and was created with Jabref; files size is 650 KB.

Does anyone have the same problem or an idea what might be causing the error?

Cheers,
Harald.

nartj

I had the same problem with a file of ~20 entries (created by JabRef). I checked the file syntax using cbibclean (http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/bibclean/). There were some problems with Jabref comments at the end of the file, and after deleting these, bibclean told me that the syntax is fine. But Zotero still wouldn't import the file, telling me the same error message as you get.

From some other posts in the forum, I learned that the refer works best for importing, so I converted my bibtex file to a refer file using the perl script bibtex2refer from (http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~wbl/biblio/tools/).

I'm working with Linux, so in case you're working with Windows/Mac, I don't know if there are other tools, but I think the general idea of going first to refer and then import that should work for any platform.

Hope that helped,
jonas

noksagt

Bibbutils is a good cross-platform solution:
http://www.scripps.edu/~cdputnam/software/bibutils/

bbolker

I appear to have exactly the same problem.
I tried the bibtex2refer script cited -- works fine except that it didn't set the item type properly (or something), so that everything appeared in the new collection as a "web page". I can work around this but it's mildly frustrating to have what seems to be such a big unresolved bug. I would work on fixing this myself, but it could take a while -- I'm not fluent in Java and it took a while just to find the scrapers.sql file (which *seems* to be where BibTeX translation takes place). It could take an awfully long time for me to scare at the code and discover what's happening ...

Does Zotero have a bugs database that's any more formal than forum posting ... ?

Ben Bolker

dstillman

I'm not fluent in Java

Zotero is coded in JavaScript, not Java.

Does Zotero have a bugs database that's any more formal than forum posting... ?

https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/649

Attach BibTeX files that are failing to that bug.

bbolker

Thanks for your reply -- sorry I didn't see it earlier.
(I'm obviously not fluent in JavaScript, either :-) )

I can't attach BibTeX files to the bug (I think)
since I'm not a developer/don't have an account
on the trac system, but I've posted a file
at

http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/bolker/parasite.bib

If you'd prefer to give me access, I can attach
it myself ...

cheers
Ben

dstillman

File doesn't seem to exist at that URL...

You can get a Trac account by filling out this form:

https://www.zotero.org/dev/trac_access

bbolker

argh. Our IIS webserver doesn't serve "unknown" mimetypes.
I've copied it to http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/bolker/parasite.txt ...

sean

bbolker-

There are a couple of minor problems with your BibTeX file:

1) Remove the JabRef header ("This file was created with JabRef 2.2b2.
Encoding: UTF8"). This header prevents Zotero from recognizing that it has found a BibTeX file.

2) Repair a couple of bad BibTex references which end with "}," instead of just "}". I found four.

Once you make these changes, the file should import without any problem. Please be patient during the import process, which took about 8 minutes on my machine (the file contains 937 references).

bbolker

you're right. sorry for the trouble.
this was admittedly my fault, but is there anywhere
in particular I should have looked to try to diagnose
the problem? (I found the "big bibtex file" problem
in the forums and jumped to conclusions ...)

sean

It's no problem at all. I just opened the file in a text editor happened to notice the extra commas. Is JabRef putting them there?

neilernst

I've just imported a large bibtex file on Ubuntu Feisty, mostly successfully. I'm using Zotero 1.0.0b4r5. My bibtex file has 994 items. It took about 100 minutes at high CPU load to do it, and my zotero.sqlite file is now 3 megs.

I've noticed that bib entries like
@techreport{postel83,
title = {{TELNET} Protocol Specification},
author = {J. Postel and J. Reynolds},
institution = {Internet Engineering Task Force},
number = {RFC854},
url = {http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc854},
year = {1983},
abstract = {The purpose of the TELNET Protocol is to provide a fairly general .... },
keywords = {protocol telnet }
}

get imported fine, except the report number is dropped on import.

sean

neilernst-

Thanks for your comment. We've tweaked the BibTeX translator to handle report numbers better. Please go to your Zotero prefs and click "Update now" to get the updated translator. Import time will dramatically improve with the next release (more than 10x faster on current dev build).

frogger3d

edit: still have problems importing but not those I reported earlier

the problems I had was that several 'conference' type entries refused to be imported, but when I changed them to 'inproceedings' it went well.

connie

Dear Dan,
Thanks for the follow-up -- I just wanted to make sure, so I double-checked, and I was able to import oss2.bib in its entirety (previous attempt was the piecemeal one) but *only when I cut the Francis Hunt and Paul Johnson ref*.

connie

-- another follow up: installed zotero on a different mac: MacBook Pro, OSX 10.4.10, Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5

tried to import the problem reference, still couldn't; upgraded to the developer build (http://zotero.org/download/zotero-devel.xpi ), still same problem.

szarka

I'm having an issue with BibTeX import that I think is related. zotero wasn't importing my BibTeX file and after reading the above I decided to try removing the two comments in the file, which look like this:

@comment {math stuff here}
@comment {econ stuff here}

The first of the two was on the first line of the file, so maybe that explains why nothing at all was imported.

At any rate, AFAIK this is the correct syntax (and it does work fine with my LaTeX installation), so IMHO zotero should support (by ignoring) comments like these. Even better, it should ignore everything outside the entries themselves.

dstillman

zotero should support (by ignoring) comments like these. Even better, it should ignore everything outside the entries themselves.

https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/687
https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/797

moninya

When i try to import my bibtex file which is 4700 lines maybe ~ 500 references, i get a non-descript error

" An error occurred while trying to import the file. Pls ensure the file is valid and try again. "

Not really sure what this means.
I tried to import a small file, 5 refs and that worked, but anything more failed.

Any ideas??

dstillman

You'll need to isolate a record in the BibTeX file that fails. Looking in Report Errors under Zotero's Actions (gear icon) menu after the import error might give you a bit more detail, though it won't tell you what record was causing the problem.

Alternatively, if you want to send us the BibTeX file at support@zot....org, we can take a look.