Exporting to EndNote XML: PDF paths use internal-pdf:// URIs instead of absolute file paths

GuoYh

Dear Zotero team,

Thank you for your continuous work on Zotero.

I would like to report an issue regarding the “Export to EndNote XML” feature when the “Export Files” option is checked.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Select one or more items in my library that have attached PDF files.

2. Right‑click → “Export Items…”.

3. Choose format: “Endnote XML” and check “Export Files”.

4. Save the resulting .xml file.

Observed behaviour:
In the exported XML, the PDF attachment is represented as: internal-pdf://[some-identifier]/[filename].pdf Expected behaviour:
For compatibility with EndNote, the field should contain the absolute file system path to the actual PDF file, because EndNote expects a resolvable path and does not understand the internal-pdf:// scheme.

Impact:
When importing this XML into EndNote, the attachment link is broken. Users must manually edit the XML file to replace every internal-pdf://... with the full absolute path, which is tedious and error‑prone, especially for large exports.

Suggestion:
Could Zotero optionally output the real filesystem path when “Export Files” is selected, at least for the EndNote XML format?

Thank you for considering this improvement.

Best regards

poettli

I don't see this behavior. On Linux and macOS, I get the absolute path. Are you using a custom exporter? Or a a custom location for your files?

GuoYh

I am using Windows 11

adamsmith

I don't have Endnote here, but for many, many years, Endnote used the internal-pdf syntax when exporting to XML. Is it really not doing that anymore? That's where Zotero got this from in the first place

poettli

(On my computers, Endnote XML.js export the absolute path, not internal-pdf, so I thought it was the expected behavior.)

adamsmith

Thanks for insisting on this poettli -- so the translator has two different behaviors:

- if you _uncheck_ file export, it simply includes a single XML file with the absolute path to the PDF (but won't include annotations with that). That does mean you can only import files to the current machine.
- if you _check_ file export, it exports a whole folder that includes the XML file and a folder with all files (including, if checked on export, annotations). Here, the link is relative and so the filepath includes the internal-pdf thing that Endnote (at least used to) uses for its own relative links on export.

There is no way with the current translator to get annotations and absolute paths, but it's trivial to run search & replace in the XML file and replace internal-pdf with the missing part of the path, of course.