importing BibTex into Zotero

kluedke1

I have a large file containing references that I want to import into Zotero. I've converted it into BibTex but Zotero won't support the file during the import. I've tried PDF, Word, and PlainText. HELP

adamsmith

bibtex is a plain text format, so that's the only thing that will work. Normally, you'd get a file as filename.bib, though Zotero doesn't actually care about the extension.

Open the file with a text editor and post the first ~20lines here

kluedke1

Here are the first 20 lines
@comment{ Adalsteinsson, S. (2007). Possible changes in the frequency of the
human ABO blood groups in Iceland due to smallpox epidemics
selection. Annals of human genetics, 49(4), 275-281. }
@article{adalsteinsson2007possible,
author = "Adalsteinsson, S.",
title = "Possible changes in the frequency of the human {ABO} blood groups in {Iceland} due to smallpox epidemics selection",
journal = "Annals of human genetics",
volume = "49",
number = "4",
pages = "275--281",
year = 2007
}
@comment{ Alexander, R. D., Hoogland J. L., Richard D. Howard, Katherine M.,
Noonan, and Sherman, P.W. 1979. Sexual

adamsmith

that should work, though those comments won't import.
So what happens when you do import?
Can you provide an error report ID right afterwards:
https://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_bugs#provide_a_report_id

kluedke1

I try importing the Bitext in textedit format and I get an error saying that Zotero doesn't support the file.

adamsmith

"textedit" is not a format, but Mac's TextEdit actually saves in RTF by default, which doesn't work for bibtex. It really needs to be in plain text.

adamsmith

if you don't have any file attachments, you can try select all, copy in the file in TextEdit and then use import from clipboard in Zotero. Good chance that will work.

kluedke1

ok, if I do that than does it need to be in BibTex format?

kluedke1

ok I tried importing from clipboard and it was able to import, but it was only the first reference and I can't seem to get it to do the rest. do you know why this might be?

adamsmith

not without seeing the whole file, no. If it's not private/confidential you could paste it to gist.github.com, create a public gist and link to it here and I could take a look.

kluedke1

Ok, here's the references in BibTex, I think it might be a problem with the Bitext converter I used as not all the references follow the same format, but here's the gist link https://gist.github.com/anonymous/1ec11c7c18de16cc5639.js

aurimas

So if you copy from this link https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/1ec11c7c18de16cc5639/raw/623bb75c7cffe63ccd1c81e232c3acd32e6e1598/BibTex and then use Import from Clipboard, Zotero throws an error? Can you submit an Error Report after Zotero fails to import from clipboard? https://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_problems