Import groups from Endnote X1?

oxburgh

I have been using Endnote X1 since it came out, and have arranged a lot of my references into Groups. The trouble is, when I export my library and import into Zotero, all the Groups that I would like to make into Zotero Collections are lost. Is there a way to transfer a library with the Group data from Endnote to Zotero?

I have tried to export the Endnote Groups individually, import them into Zotero and make them individual Collections. However, there is no way I have found to subtract out the contents of the Groups from the complete Endnote library, so when I import the library (about 75% of which is not arranged into Groups) to Zotero, all the references in Zotero Collections are duplicated. This isn't really feasible to work with, and weeding out those 750 duplicates (in each case selecting the one that does not belong to a Collection) seems like a chore for a computer rather than a human being, is there a way to do this?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Rintze

Maybe the solution offered in this post might work:

http://forums.thomsonscientific.com/ts/board/message?board.id=en-howto&message.id=235&query.id=46275#M235

The only additional steps would be to copy the references from the imported tab to a new empty library, export the references from that library from Endnote and import them in Zotero.

I guess that ideally Zotero would allow for conversion of Endnote groups into Zotero collections upon import, but I don't know if there are any export formats available in Endnote that include the grouping metadata.

oxburgh

Thanks for the suggestion - in principle it is quite an elegant fix to this problem, but the import function on Endnote does not seem to work as advertised. Although the library file is closed, Endnote will only import 34 out of around 2,500 refs in the library - always the same selection with first author names from A to Z. I tried recovering my library into a new one in case it was corrupted, but I got the same result with the new library. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Is there any possibility to discard duplicates in Zotero?

Rintze

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

You'll probably have more luck asking this on the Endnote forum.

Is there any possibility to discard duplicates in Zotero?

It's a planned feature, but as of yet it's not possible to automate this:
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/665/find-consolidateremove-duplicate-automatically/?Focus=17270#Comment_17270

oxburgh

No responses yet from the Endnote site, I suspect the resolution will involve buying an upgrade for Endnote. I did modify the procedure to work without using the import function though:

1. Make a copy of your Endnote library (don't use the original as you will have to delete parts of it), and select each Endnote Group, select all refs within that group and export (text only/BibTeX Export.ens)

2. Import each Endnote group into Zotero and rename to generate a Collection for each Group

3. In Endnote, make a new Group (*allgroups - will bring it to the top of your list) and copy all of the references from each of your Groups into it. Make a note of the total number of refs in *allgroups.

4. Select all references in *allgroups and then select the All References Group (the selected refs belonging to *allgroups should be greyed out in the references panel)

5. Command-click (Mac) or CTRL-click (PC) twice on one of the greyed refs (unselects it, reselects it and activates the reference panel). The selected refs belonging to *allgroups are now blue, and can be removed by pressing delete

6. All of the Groups should now be empty, and the All References Group should have shrunk by the number of refs in *allgroups

7. Export all the refs in your modified Endnote library, and import into Zotero. The automatically generated Collection named Import (date etc) can be removed

You should now have your Endnote Groups as Zotero Collections, and the references not sorted into Groups should be represented in your Zotero Library. This does not take care of duplicates/triplicates etc generated if you have a single ref in multiple Endnote Groups - not a problem for me, but I'd be curious to know if anyone has a solution.